Return to Xanadu
by stefanie bean
Summary: A LOST sequel. Hurley heals and rebuilds the Island, while Claire, Kate, and Sawyer head back to our world. But when it comes to love, the Island has a way of getting you where you need to be. (Fantasy elements; think "American Gods" on the Island.)
1. The New Jacob

**Chapter 1: The New Jacob**

**(A/N: **_Many thanks to_**_ emerson023 _**_for looking over this first chapter, __and offering some good suggestions__._

**Also: **_While it's not necessary, you might enjoy reading_**_ Xanadu _**_beforehand, as it's__ a prequel_**.)**

By the side of a stream which flowed down to a shining cave, Hugo Reyes crouched like a large and irregular rock waiting to be smoothed into its proper shape. Jacob, the Island's Protector, had called this place "the Heart of The Island." Whatever it was, you could watch its light play on the shimmering water for hours. Just to be near it made you happy, even if everything around you was falling to pieces.

Like the Island.

Jack Shephard and Desmond Hume were supposed to have kept the Island from sinking like Atlantis into underwater destruction, and the monster who had worn John Locke's face was dead. Still, the Island shook as if about to rip itself apart. The earth buckled with tremors, and aftershocks rattled the pebbles on the river's edge.

Grey, ominous clouds hung above, and every few minutes the sky dumped buckets of rain down onto the soaked, shivering men. But they were still here, which meant that whatever Jack had done had worked. So far, at least.

On the other side of the stream, Benjamin Linus tended Desmond, still unconscious from his climb down to the Island's Heart. Ben opened Desmond's eyes, first one, then the other and thought that there was never a doctor around when you needed one. If Desmond had a concussion, Ben was on his own. What was it with the pupils of the eye when someone got knocked in the head? Dilated, that's right. Or one dilated, but not the other. Desmond's eyes looked normal, though, and his breathing came out in small, measured puffs. But try as he might, Ben couldn't get Desmond to respond. Even twisting Desmond's ear or pinching the tender skin of his inner arm didn't rouse him. He appeared to be not so much sleeping as under some kind of deep anesthesia.

Desmond's color was good, though, and his pulse strong. Ben pillowed Desmond's head with his backpack, then crossed the stream over to where Hugo sat. He stepped carefully over the water, not wanting to sully it with his feet.

It was hard for Ben not to feel sorry for himself. All those years he'd spent on the Island, and yet Jacob had left him alone for so long. All that remained of Jacob's memory, for Ben at least, was pain. The pain of loving someone he had never seen, so that his whole heart ached with longing. All those years of waiting, being told that he wasn't ready, that he'd have to be patient. Then, to be brought in so close, only at the very last moment to be pushed away. What about you, indeed. Lies, all of it. Lies, filth, deception. Finally, when the door of mystery opened a crack, giving him a teasing glimpse of what was inside, it then slammed shut in his face.

There was only one thing to do in that case. If you meet the Buddha on the road, thrust a knife into his chest. Which is exactly what Ben had done.

Now, the new Jacob sat right there before Ben, and if he decided to kill Ben outright, Ben wouldn't blame him. One thing you could say about living with Jacob's people, whom the Oceanic castaways had called 'The Others.' You quickly learned to face death, even if death really wasn't what you wanted at the time_._

However, Hugo didn't look angry, or vengeful, just sad. So Ben invoked the same voice he'd used when his daughter Alex had scraped a knee. "I think Desmond's gonna be OK."

Hugo continued to stare into the golden cave, and said, "Jack's...gone...isn't he?"

Ben didn't answer at first, just watched as water flowed into the Heart, and golden light poured out of it. Its gold was watered in blood, though, and bought with the price of blood. Of course Jack was gone, and not just because the unimaginable engine which hummed beneath the Island had started up again. Jack had offered up a sacrifice, which the Island had accepted. The waters of the Heart would always carry a few drops of Jack's blood, as well as Jacob's, and all their unknown predecessors.

The tears ran down Hugo's open, unashamed face, and Ben frantically searched for some comfort to offer. "He did his job, Hugo."

"It's my job now... What the hell am I supposed to do?"

The question caught Ben by surprise. It wasn't exactly like Ben knew either, for that matter. As a young father, holding infant Alex small and helpless in his arms, Ben had asked the same thing. Then Ben remembered how, in the Barracks a bit over three years ago, his daughter Alex with less than twenty-four hours to live, Hugo had held baby Aaron up against his breast in the same way Ben used to hold Alex. Hugo had rocked with the same soothing, swaying motions while Alex played with the baby's toes, and Claire beamed at all of them.

The answer was obvious. Ben said, "I think you do what you do best. Take care of people. You can start by helping Desmond get home."

"But how? People can't leave the Island."

That hadn't been entirely true in the past, but Ben had no idea what this new Jacob could or couldn't do. For an instant, Ben's characteristic coldness returned in force, and with a practiced, critical eye he surveyed Hugo. There was nothing to stop Hugo from simply taking his newly-won prize, his powers beyond imagining, and walking away. He could leave Ben sitting by the side of this glossy pool, and instead save himself as best he could. After all, it's what Ben would have done. What he had done, many a time.

But Ben very badly did not want that to happen. John Locke had once said that the Island was a place where miracles happened. That Ben was still drawing breath was testimony to that. So not believing it, but hoping in its truth, Ben said, "That's how Jacob ran things. Maybe there's another way. A better way."

"Will you help me?"

Ben stared, incredulous. "I'm sorry?"

"I could really use someone with like, experience. For a little while. Will you help me, Ben?"

Jacob had never needed him. Everything Ben had thought he was doing for Jacob had come to nought, or worse. Then, like a long-locked door, something opened in Ben's heart. When it had seemed that the Island might actually be destroyed, Ben had given up the chance to escape. He had made his choice, to stay with the Island, even if it did break apart. Perhaps this was his reward, although God knew that neither the Island, nor Jacob, nor circumstances offered up many rewards, especially for the likes of him. But perhaps Jack Shephard had been wrong. Perhaps there were second chances. Perhaps there were "do-overs."

Perhaps there was even one for him. "I'd be honored."

"Cool," Hugo answered.

The sparkling stream had changed from dirty grey-brown to clear, and now shone with a rich warm glow from the inside out. The formerly stagnant air swirled with fresh, clean breezes. Then the earth shook again, mildly at first, then more strongly. "I thought we were over this," Ben said, a bit fretful.

"You live in L.A., you get used to it. Aftershocks."

"Then I guess we should stay put until they're over."

"They can go on a long time, man. Hey, you think he's still all right?"

Ben and Hugo both looked at Desmond, whose chest barely rose and fell with breathing. He wasn't pale, though. In fact, he was almost ruddy, and his skin was warm. Ben shook him gently, and Desmond gave a faint smile. But he didn't rouse, and he didn't open his eyes. Ben said, "Maybe he just has to sleep it off."

"We don't need any more trees falling on us."

Ben shuddered. Just a few hours earlier, on their way to the Island's Heart, Ben had been pinned by a massive tree. Under a pelting rain, Kate, Sawyer, and Hugo had struggled to free him, but nothing worked. Sawyer and Kate had wanted to leave Ben, for which Ben didn't blame them. He would have left him behind, too.

Hugo had stood there for a few seconds in the pouring rain, as if torn. Then Hugo had shouted to the woods, to the sky, to no one in particular, "If you want us there, get us there!" Then he gave the log a mighty push, and in a rush of mud and water, the thick trunk slid off Ben's body.

"Son of a bitch," Sawyer had said, while Hugo just shrugged.

Now, though, it was clear that Ben wasn't going to be left. He was usually a quick study, but this new reality was taking awhile to penetrate.

All at once the earth shuddered, hard, and the sky opened in a rushing downpour. The nearby stream began to rise, so together Ben and Hugo pulled Desmond to his feet. He lolled between them like a rag doll, so they carried him fireman-style up a rocky slope to a small papaya grove which shut out most of the rain. There they pulled together a crude lean-to of branches and leaves, then hauled Desmond inside.

At first it seemed that Desmond might regain consciousness. With eyes half-open, he muttered, "I'm not supposed to be here. This wasn't supposed to happen." Then he sank back into his stupor.

"Ask him about Jack," Hugo said. "Maybe he'll tell us what happened."

Ben shook his head. "He's out again."

The earth seemed to be settling, and the relentless rain slowed to a trickle. Hugo said, "I'm gonna stretch my legs. Have a look around."

"Good idea," Ben said. "Bring back some palm leaves. Maybe they'll keep us drier."

Hugo stomped away through the underbrush, leaves and twigs crackling in his wake. Now the jungle was quiet except for the occasional cheep of a frog, or the drip of rain off of the leaves. A few minutes passed, then more. When Hugo didn't return, a small panic flashed through Ben. If something had happened to Hugo, Ben didn't know what he'd do with Desmond, as Ben certainly couldn't move him by himself. Carrying him up here with Hugo had been rough enough.

Most likely, Hugo hadn't believed him after all about Jack's final end, and had gone back to search for Jack on his own. But for now, all Ben could do was wait.

To distract himself, he reached for his weather-stained shoulder bag and took from the innermost pouch a book with a dark red leather binding. Its large gold letters read, _Thomas Traherne: __Selected __Poems._

Ben put his hand to his face to adjust his glasses, but his fingers collided only with nose and forehead. Then, panicked, he reached into the breast pocket of his shirt, coming up empty-handed. Scrabbling through his bag and trouser pockets produced nothing, either.

Where in the hell had he lost them? It must have been while he had been pinned by that log, most likely when Hugo had dragged him out from under it.

Despair seized Ben. He had been so careful. Even when driving a knife into Jacob's chest, feeling it hit bone and then pass through to the soft organs beneath, Ben had been conscious of the glasses in his breast pocket. All he could think of was keeping them from falling to the hard earthen floor of that room beneath the wreckage of the great Egyptian statue.

No more reading; without his glasses it would be impossible. He gave a laugh, small and bitter. What a fitting punishment.

Opening the book, Ben stroked the page as if fingers would help recall the well-loved verses. But there was no need for memory, because the words appeared on the page sharp and clear in the dim greenish light:

_You never enjoy the world aright,_  
><em>Till the Sea itself floweth in your veins,<em>  
><em>Till you are clothed with the heavens,<em>  
><em>And crowned with the stars...<em>

It wasn't possible. He should not have been able to read this at all.

Like a man in a dream, Ben put the book down and crept out of the lean-to. The sun's pale disc made a bright spot in a sky already starting to clear from the smoke and dust. He held his hand up before him, the hand which had caressed and loved and murdered, seeing in crisp detail the cuts, the scratches, small criss-crossed webs of skin, the overgrown cuticles of his nails, instead of an unrecognizable pink and white blur.

He looked across the jungle at the farthest ridge-tops with their waving palms. Far away stood a line of cycads half-beaten down by wind and water, with their tiny incised leaves standing out with silver clarity against the deeper shadows behind them. Their fronds curled down, weighted by rain, and he could see even the small tendrils of hairs around their rolling forms.

Ben saw.

He felt like weeping. It wasn't much, not quite as impressive as having been confined to a wheelchair with paralysis, and then being able to walk again. But sometimes smaller gestures touched you more than grand, sweeping ones. It was another gift, another modest reward. Very well, he would take what was offered, and not complain.

Out to the distant western horizon, the tall black mountain ridge which guarded The Island's sunset side came into clear view. From the highest peak rose a plume of black smoke, followed by one bright yellow-orange arc after another. Bright red ribbons threaded their way down the mountain's dark sides.

At once Ben stopped thinking about what had happened to his eyes, because vision would be the least of his worries if the top blew off that volcano. The Island had been the center of Ben's life for over thirty years, and now it was coming apart at the seams in a way he'd never imagined it could. The monster which wore John Locke's form might not have gotten his wish to leave, but if he could not fly across the sea, he would make sure that everything would sink beneath it.

Jack had failed. They all had.

The death Ben had contemplated so long, the death he was convinced he deserved, was coming for him in the guise of a blackened sky and the belch of fumes. This wasn't supposed to happen. Whatever Desmond had done down there in that strange, light-filled hole, whatever Jack had died for, it had apparently been for nothing. It seemed as if the Island was going to break apart after all.

He made his way back to the shelter, and crawled back in with still-sleeping Desmond. Not that it would do any good, because Desmond would either wake again, or he wouldn't, regardless of anything Ben did. They would live, or not. If a monstrous plume of hot ash covered them all, there was nothing Ben could do about it. But at least he wouldn't be alone.

* * *

><p>After Hugo left the crude shelter, he headed upwards to where the sky was brightest, following an inclined path which led to a hilltop clearing. As Hugo climbed, stumbling once in awhile on the uneven ground, he thought about his situation.<p>

That was some pass Jack had sent him, for sure. Not like the last round of baskets the two of them had shot years before, when Hugo was still locked up in Santa Rosa. Back then, he and Jack were on opposite sides. Now, though, Jack had passed one hell of a ball over to him, and what he was supposed to do with it, he had no idea. He couldn't carry it, couldn't dribble it, and no long free throw would get rid of it for him. While Hugo wasn't ready to give up on Jack for good, if Jack was gone, he was screwed. Because then there'd be no giving it back.

Shame dogged Hugo's footsteps, too. Earlier, he and Ben had hauled Desmond up from the Island's Heart, and Hugo had given a long howl of sorrow when he saw that Jack wasn't tied to the end of that rope. Life was life, though, or should be. But if he'd been forced to choose, would he have picked Jack over Desmond?

Yes, he had to admit, he would have. And oh Jack, stupid Jack, why had he done it? It was suicide. Jack had to have known it was going to be. Hadn't Jack said that he was already dead?

But there was nothing to be done about it now, for Hugo, breathing heavily, had reached the summit. At the sight of the beautiful vista spread out before him, he forgot his thumping heart and cramped legs. The sun was already starting its afternoon descent into the western sea, and if it continued on its course, it looked as if it might sink directly into the bubbling, erupting volcano which sent forth into the air streams of lava and glowing ash. Where the thick lava hit the sea, huge clouds of steam churned up as the waves boiled away.

It was the most beautiful thing Hugo had ever seen.

Over to the east, the pale curve of a calmer sea wrapped the green cliffs in a close embrace. Sunlight sifted through thin gray clouds drawn across the sky in wide luminous streaks, which cast a pearly radiance over the landscape. A tiny metal bird moved across the sky, glittering in the sunlight as it went.

Ajira 316.

Transfixed, Hugo stared at the plane as it circled around the Island in a long arc once, then twice, before heading on its final flight towards the eastern horizon. Then, with a heart-stopping motion, the plane lost altitude, and for a moment Hugo thought it was going to crash into the eastern waves. Softly he said, "Mother of God, please help them_._" All at once the plane banked up sharply, as if some unseen hand had pulled it out of its stall. As it went on its way, its bright birdlike silhouette shrank to a dark spot against the distant blue haze, then vanished.

"Dude," he whispered.

They were really gone now, all of them: Kate, Sawyer, and maybe even Claire. Poor Claire. He hoped she wasn't still trapped on Hydra Island, and that she'd managed to get on board the plane after all. The last time he'd seen her, she'd taken cover behind some barrels as she fired carefully-aimed shots at Widmore's men hidden in the tree-line. Even as Hugo ducked flying bullets as he struggled down the submarine ladder, he still had time to wonder where she had learned to shoot like that.

Hugo hoped Sawyer hadn't shut Claire out of the sub on purpose. But even if Sawyer didn't want to let Claire get on the plane, he'd have to get past Kate first, because Kate had moved heaven and earth to get back to the Island just to find Claire. Hugo had faith in Kate. Just a couple of days before, Kate had made Sawyer let Claire come on board the _Elizabeth_, even after Claire had slipped out of the jungle like a ninja and pointed a gun at everybody. If Kate could convince Sawyer then, Hugo fervently hoped she could do it again.

He was going to miss Miles too, as sarcastic as Miles could be sometimes. The scruffy pilot he hardly knew, but he'd seemed like a really cool guy. Hugo waved at the space of sky where the silver plane had been and said, "Bye, guys. Go with God."

Hugo also hoped that if they made it back to L.A., they would tell his parents that he was alive. There hadn't been any time to ask them at the end there, but someone would think of it. Kate would, for sure. They would make it back, wouldn't they? Why else would they have gotten as far as they had?

Don't jinx it, man, Hugo told himself as he stared into the east awhile longer, almost expecting to see the plane turn around and come back. There had been so many turn-arounds in all those years. So many people thought they were going to leave, and didn't. So many people thought they were going to stay away, and then they came back.

What it boiled down to was this. When the Island said you could leave, you could. And if it wanted you to return, then it would reach across oceans and even time itself to bring you back.

Or was it really just up to the Island? Ben had said to him, "Those were Jacob's rules." Rules? How was he going to set rules? What did you do, just walk up to the Island and say, "There are new rules now, my rules?" What had made Ben think anyone, or anything, would even listen?

Too many questions. Anyway, he had to get back to Ben and Desmond, to make sure they were still OK after "the great earth-shake," as he put it to himself, with the kind of half-hysterical laughter you make when you might otherwise cry.

And hope beyond hope, Jack could still be down there in that mysterious hole full of light. Or maybe there were other escape routes, and Jack had found one by now. And that weird thing with the water, what was that about? "Now you're like me," Jack had said. What did that mean? Whatever it was Jack was supposed to have done to him, he didn't feel any different. He was supposed to protect the Island, but from what, it wasn't clear. Take care of people, as Ben said, but that went without saying.

Maybe the Island still needed protecting from Locke, the fake one. Yes, Hugo had seen that pathetic, broken body at the base of the cliff. But Hugo knew better than to assume that dead things always stayed dead. For all he knew, the monster could have hissed out of Locke's body like steam from a frying pan and flown into the air, looking for another host. If the Smoke Monster was still out there, there wouldn't be a single solitary thing Hugo could do about it, not against a creature that could rip people apart with a touch.

Hugo shuddered. If it came after him, he was done for. But funny thing, it never had bothered him even before he had drunk the water which Jack had given him. All of the times Hugo had been in the jungle alone, it had never come after him.

On the other hand, maybe Jack really had fixed things. One final tremor shuddered underfoot, but he managed to stay upright until the earth was quiet. Deep down, a strong sense told him that this aftershock would be the Island's last, if only because the earth had stopped shaking and the skies had cleared.

The Island didn't feel like it was going to break apart anymore. The winds, which just moments ago had smelled like eggs left too long in the refrigerator, once again carried that sweet smell you found nowhere else, as if the air itself was alive and always fresh. As if it was breathing life into you, with every little breeze.

A sweet wind, which could wash away even the smell of death.

Not that the sweetness of the Island had done anything to help Sun and Jin, drowned before they got to spend even a single day together. Sayid was gone, too, and without him, all on board the sub would have shared Sun and Jin's fate. A pang of loneliness and fear stabbed through Hugo. What if he were left alone here? That would be the worst, the worst ever, and for a second Hugo wished he'd gone back with Kate and Sawyer and the others.

Off to the west the tallest peak still smoked, and an occasional shining red thread slowly worked its way down the mountain's broad black side. The volcano was slowing down, that was for sure.

But there still could be lava, even as Ben and Desmond waited down there. He had to get back to them, and not only for their sake, but for his own. To be alone here, truly alone, that was too much. He broke into a near-run as he careened downhill, away from the sea, back into the jungle, not paying attention to the way that he'd originally come.

All he could think was that he had to find Ben and Desmond and anyone who was left alive. Maybe even Jack. Oh, please, let that happen.

A large bird cawed as it flew up from a stand of trees, its loud cry echoing from all directions, and Hugo came to a full stop. The bird circled a few times, calling out, "Hurrr-leee! Hurrr-leee!" Hugo watched it for a few seconds, admiring the long emerald tail feathers which spread out behind it. He'd seen that kind of bird a couple of times before, had even been convinced that it had spoken his name. Now he was sure of it, even if Sawyer was wrong, and it didn't crap gold. And this time the bird was joined by others who cried out in answer, "Hurrr-leee! Hurrr-leee! Hurrr-leee!"

Hugo thought he was going back down the way he came, but now he wasn't sure. Well, that was great, he chided himself. Wasn't that just like him to get distracted, get lost in the jungle, and before you knew it, people would start dying. If worst came to worst, he could keep going downhill until he hit the stream, and then back-track his way up to the papaya grove where Ben waited.

The jungle hung all around him, hovering, expectant. The canopy here seemed thicker, the undergrowth darker and more dense. Although the mid-afternoon sun shone bright in the sky, little of it pierced the interlaced trees. The wind whistling through the highest branches made an eerie song, almost like voices. A flock of the big green birds circled above him now, cawing mightily, in harmony with the other smaller birds who had joined them. Their chorus grew louder and more noisy until all at once, it stopped.

The silence was so abrupt that it almost hurt his ears. Hugo pushed through a screen of hanging vines into a little clearing, and stopped in surprise. There in the center stood a tree with every branch and limb weighted down with birds. None of them made a peep. Only their feathers faintly rustled as they shook their small limbs or ruffled their wings.

Then he could have sworn the largest of the green ones spoke, and it sounded like a question. "Hurrr-leee?"

Hugo came closer to admire it, and it didn't fly away. Up close, its shadowy emerald feathers shimmered as if dusted with gold. The bird turned its head to the side to fix its eye on him, as if it wanted to tell him something very important.

Hugo wished he had a piece of apple or peach to offer it. He stretched out his arm, thinking that it would leap onto his forearm, when a loud bark rang out from the forest.

Surprised, Hugo whirled around. As another short, sharp bark echoed through the clearing, the tree exploded into a flurry of rustling feathers and chirps, caws, and whistles. In a rainbow swirl the birds all rose up into the canopy, the small brown ones, the bright red ones that looked like parakeets, a few fuzzy grey ones, and ten or so of the great green birds.

More barks, and away the cloud of birds flew. A thick-bodied Labrador retriever bounded through the brush, his yellowish fur looking almost grey in the undergrowth shadow.

Hugo squatted to greet the dog, ruffling his fur. Vincent licked his face, then darted back towards the jungle and barked again.

"You got something to show me?" Hugo said. "At least you're not carrying somebody's arm this time." At once he felt sorry that he'd said that, because after all, it had been Ben's dad's arm which Vincent had brought them from the jungle so many years ago. Even if Roger Linus had been a massive douche, you still had to respect the dead. "Hey, boy, you know where Ben is? Can you take me to Ben?"

Vincent barked once more, darted into the undergrowth, and was gone. "Here we go again," Hugo said to no one in particular, as he waded through the bushes in Vincent's direction.

(_continued_)


	2. Roses in December

**Chapter 2: Roses in December**

As Ben waited for Hugo to return, he read to distract himself, reveling in his new vision. At the same time, he kept alert for any changes in Desmond's slow, shallow breathing.

After a time, Desmond's breaths turned to light snores, and he thrashed a bit, as if surfacing from deep water. When Desmond finally opened his eyes, he grabbed his forehead with both hands like someone who'd spent a long evening in a Glasgow pub, and was now paying the consequences.

"Can you sit up?" Ben asked.

Desmond raised himself on his elbows, but thought better of it. "The world's all tilt-a-whirl."

"Better not, then. Not yet. Let me give you a drink."

"Do I dare ask what's happened?"

A fretful tone came into Ben's voice, and he tried to push it down. "Hugo's been off in the jungle for over an hour, and I didn't want to leave you alone."

"I appreciate that." After a few moments, Desmond crawled out of the lean-to and pulled himself to his feet.

Ben followed, squinting in the brilliant sunlight. "You look none the worse for wear."

"Aye, once I got over the disappointment."

"Disappointment?"

"I was so sure, mate. So sure that I'd find myself on my boat, with the coffee already on to boil and Charlie making a running leap for the bunk, crying out that it was time for Daddy to wake up."

"It's not that easy to get off this Island."

"Don't I know it."

"So, Desmond, if you don't mind me asking. What was it like down there?"

Desmond rubbed his head again, although he didn't seem to be in pain. "I don't know. It's all kind of a jumble now. There was Jack with the rope, blood all over him. A hole in the ground which looked like it opened to hell itself. And flashes, so many flashes, like a dozen films in my head playing all at once."

"You seem OK," said Ben.

"Now it's all fading, like some strange dream." Desmond looked around, scoping out the jungle as if seeing it for the first time. "So where's Jack, then? Did you and Hurley haul him up too?"

Before Ben could answer, sounds of shaking branches and footfalls rang out from the forest.

"Come on, Desmond!" Ben darted back into the lean-to, pulling a few loose branches over the space behind him, wondering if he could be seen. Just because he had put three slugs into Charles Widmore didn't mean they were in the clear. If Widmore still had men patrolling the jungle, Ben didn't particularly want to meet them.

But Desmond didn't follow, so Ben peered through the screen of leaves. Desmond rested on his haunches with a relaxed half-smile on his face, waiting for whatever plodded through the jungle. Ben retreated back into the shelter, wishing he could drag Desmond in with him, hating his own fear in the face of Desmond's calm acceptance.

The branches rustled louder this time. Ben's heart gave a small terrified leap as a wet dog nose pushed its way into the shelter. Then the rest of Vincent shoved its way in, filling the lean-to with doggy wriggles.

"Hey!" Hugo called out.

Desmond said, "Hurley?"

Ben couldn't get out, hemmed in as he was by Vincent, who covered his face with enthusiastic licks.

"Yeah, it's me," Hugo said as he pulled away some of the leafy branches which concealed Ben. "Hey, listen, guys. I saw the plane. Over the ridge."

Vincent turned his attention to Desmond, who stood up to deflect dog-kisses. "The plane that brought you here, eh?"

"They took off. With Kate and Sawyer and everybody. They're going back."

"Well, I guess the rules can change after all," Ben half-whispered to himself, as if he hadn't really believed it himself until now.

As if something puzzled him, Hugo scrutinized Ben. "What are you doing in there anyway?"

Ben pulled himself out, and the whole structure tumbled to the ground. A little embarrassed, Ben said, "Some of Widmore's men could still be here, running around in the jungle. I'm not so sure that _thing_ would have been able to take care of all of them."

Desmond grimaced. "Them. The ones who shanghaied me."

"You know, guys, I think the smoke thing ate them all."

Ben knew there were two that the smoke monster didn't get, but he said nothing.

To Desmond Hugo said, "Jack's still down there, isn't he?"

"I was hoping he was with you, brother."

Hugo hesitated before asking, "Is there any chance? Any chance he could be alive?"

"There's maybe a wee chance," Desmond said. "With this Island, who knows?"

"That's all very well," said Ben. "But we could have a lot worse problem on our hands if some of those men are still out there."

"I don't think any of them are out there anymore," Hugo said.

"What about Charles Widmore?" Desmond asked. "You think the smoke thing got him, too?"

"Charles Widmore is the least of your worries, Desmond," Ben said in a cold voice.

Hugo said, "Ben, what did you do?"

"What I had to. Anyway, Desmond, I didn't think you cared."

"He was my son's grandfather. And my wife's father."

Vincent started to whimper as he pressed his nose against Hugo's leg. Hugo said, "If there's even a chance, I have to know for sure."

"I'll come with you, mate."

"Are you sure you can walk, Des?" Hugo said.

"I've got my sea-legs back. Just as well that there are no more aftershocks."

The earth was completely still now. Under the bright sun, soft breezes whistled through the trees, accompanied by the swish of Vincent's tail on the leafy ground.

Ben said to Hugo, "Do you think you can find it again?"

"I'll have to. Des, you went down there before. Do you think you could, uh-"

Desmond shuddered as if the prospect shook him to the core, but he said, "Of course, Hurley. If there's any chance, we should take it."

Back-tracking their steps as best they could, the three of them set out for the bamboo grove. As soon as they reached the outskirts, though, it was clear they had to go no further.

Jack Shephard lay on his back as if sleeping, sheltered by thick green bamboo stalks, his dirt-streaked face dappled with sunlight. Vincent loped over to Jack's body, and snuggled down on his chest. A large puddle of blood had stained the whole right side of Jack's blue t-shirt and jeans a deep brownish-black.

"Jack?" Hugo said, kneeling down, shaking him. "Are you OK? Are you with us?"

Vincent looked up at Hugo with an expression which said, _Don't be silly_.

Desmond put his hand on Hugo's shoulder. "Brother, I think that's it for him."

From deeper in the bamboo thicket, Ben said, "There's a trail of blood over here. He must have walked all the way from the Heart. I can't imagine how he got himself out."

"I knew he was alive down there. I just knew it." Hugo sat down and drew Jack's body into his arms, cradling it against his chest.

Vincent plopped down in Jack's lap, and Hugo embraced them both. Never had Ben seen a more improbable _Pietà_.

"We need to cover him with something." Desmond said.

"We need to bury him," countered Ben.

Hugo's mouth was drawn down in sorrow. "We need Rose and Bernard."

In a dry voice Ben said, "If they're even still alive."

"They're alive," said Hugo. "So many people aren't, though. Sun, Jin, Sayid, Juliet-"

"Juliet?" Ben said, his heart skipping a beat.

Hugo shook his head, staring down at Jack's body. "Yeah, last week or something, when that bomb blew us back to the future. Which is now. Man, time travel sucks."

"I always wondered what happened to her."

"Sawyer buried her up by what used to be our Hatch. They lived together back when you were a kid. You don't remember her from then, do you?"

It was news to Ben. Sawyer and Juliet, well. He couldn't have predicted that. After all, Juliet had preferred doctors, hadn't she? She certainly wasted no time finding one on the Island to be her lover, until Ben sent him off to die. Inside Ben something collapsed, another tiny surrender. Juliet's blood was on his hands, and he had no idea how to wash it off.

"Yeah, you were pretty sick, from what Kate said." Then Hugo fixed Ben with an intent stare and waved his arm around, indicating Jack, the jungle, maybe the Island itself. "Ben, all this has gotta stop. All this killing, things blowing up, innocent people dying. It's over, Ben. It's not happening. Least not on my watch."

When Ben had first seen Hugo, Hugo had knelt before him bound and gagged on the Pala Ferry dock. Back then, Ben had figured him for a big, dumb ox. Now, however, the dumb ox looked more like a bull.

Desmond broke the thick tension. "This is what we'll do. There are tarps at your beach camp, right?"

"Should be," said Hugo.

"Let's take him there. We'll find something to cover him. I'll check out Rose and Bernard's camp, and be back quick as a whistle. Ben, it's probably best you don't go with me, though."

"And just why is that?"

"Because just this very morning you were there when Locke threatened to carve up Rose, so they might be rather upset to see you. But even before you and Locke showed up, they wanted me to move along. Something about wanting to remain neutral, and all that."

Hugo said, "Rose won't be that mad. Or if she is, it won't last long. So, Des, Ben can go with you, and I'll take Jack to the beach."

Ben said, "Are you sure you want to do it this way, Hugo? The soonest we could get back to the beach would be tomorrow, and that's assuming Rose and Bernard don't just send us on our way. We have to work quickly, or he's going to start to smell."

Hugo scooted Vincent off Jack's lap. The dog slid to the ground, then sauntered off into the underbrush. Hugo reached for Ben and tugged his shirt, drawing Ben in close to Jack's body. "Does he smell bad to you, Ben?"

Ben wrinkled his nose and tried to resist the pull. "Hugo, I don't think this is really necessary."

Desmond's eyes shone with delight. "I know what Hurley means. Take a breath."

Ben bent down to the dirt- and blood-covered body, hesitant, as if it might jump up and grab him.

"Closer," Hugo said.

The odor hit Ben all at once, and he lurched back in surprise. Then, almost against his will, he took a deep breath, and not only his nose but his whole being filled with the scent. Distilled in that fragrance was every rose he had ever smelled. The climbing roses which covered his grandmother's back porch. The _floribunda_ bushes which Annie's father had planted in front of their house. The Portland Rose Garden in full June bloom.

Ben took in another breath of that light and delicate smell. Its power lay not in its intensity but in its purity, as if one perfect rose lent its essence to all others throughout the entire world, and that fragrance now rested over the mortal remains of Jack Shephard.

"I don't think he's going to rot on us anytime soon," said Hugo, as if Ben still needed convincing.

"Can you carry him?" Desmond asked Hugo. "It's a good couple miles from here to your beach."

"I can manage it, Des."

There would be no arguing with Hugo, so Ben just nodded his agreement.

"We're off, then," Desmond said, a bit of that peculiar shine from the Island's Heart still clinging to him like gold dust. Ben picked up his pack and traipsed after Desmond through the bamboo, unsure about this new arrangement where Hugo led and everyone else followed.

* * *

><p>Long after Ben and Desmond had disappeared into the bush, Hugo still cradled Jack's body in his lap. Wind rustled through the bamboo, sounding less like whispers and more like song. That chorus kept them company as the sun moved slowly across the sky and lengthened the shadows across Jack's face.<p>

Hugo kicked himself for not staying by the pool, for not waiting. Jack had probably climbed out after they'd headed for high ground, which meant that no one had been there for him. Damn, he couldn't even be trusted with a goldfish or a box turtle, much less the care and keeping of Mystery Island. Well, if he was the best there was for the Island, the Island would just have to manage.

Aloud he said, "Jack, I'm sorry. So sorry. I really wish you could tell me what to do. I know you weren't Protector for very long, but you had to learn something, right?"

The jungle fell into a hush broken only by a whispering chorus in the tree-tops. The skin on Hugo's forearms started to prickle, as if lightning was building up in the air. Hugo felt like a door had opened behind his back, one which led to wide, unfathomable spaces. He had sensed that strange aura all his life, but not until this instant did he recognize it for what it was.

A tall, slender man in a dark suit walked into the clearing. Branches rustled around him, as if he stirred up a slight wind. His bare feet made no noise on the leaf-strewn ground. "Hello, Hugo," he said.

This kind of thing happened too often for Hugo to flinch. "Dude, do I know you?"

The man squatted down next to Hugo. "Not exactly."

"You're dead, right? I was hoping for Jack."

"Don't expect Jack, not for awhile."

"That sucks, because I could use some advice."

"I'll try to help."

"So, who are you?"

"I'm Christian. Christian Shephard. I'm Jack's father."

Hugo said, "You should be proud. He saved us. He saved us all."

"I am proud." Christian reached out and stroked his lifeless son's hair. "You had what it takes, kiddo."

"You look kind of familiar. Wait a minute, it was in the cabin. The one that moved."

"Actually, that wasn't me. I was being impersonated."

"By the smoke-thing, the one who looked like Locke."

"That's right."

"So after Claire's house blew up and she said that she saw her dad, that must have been-"

"I'm afraid so."

"So, you were Claire's dad."

"By a liaison of which I'm not too proud. What am I saying, liaison?" Christian laughed a little, but in a shamefaced way. "Claire's mother was my other family. I ruined everything for her. She never wanted anyone after me."

"That's nothing to brag about, man."

"I'm not bragging, Hugo, just stating what happened. It's the first thing they teach you here, not to hide from the facts. But out of the bitter came the sweet, and that was Claire."

For a moment Hugo became the young and foolish "Hurley" again, as a blush covered his face like sunburn. But like Christian said, only the facts. Smokey-Locke had gotten ahold of Claire, but Hugo was willing to bet that under the pain, the anger, the wildcat appearance, Claire's old sweetness remained.

Besides, you couldn't hide a single solitary thing from dead people, not what you thought or felt, nothing.

Christian looked Hugo over with a wry half-smile. "This much I can tell you. They're headed to Tarawa Atoll. Beyond that I can't see."

Hugo hadn't the faintest idea where that was, but this was even better than hope. This was assurance. "Awesome. No, it's beyond awesome. Thank you so much." He wanted to reach for Christian's hand or even hug him, but Jack's heavy, inert weight lay in his lap, and hugging a ghost might be not the best idea, anyway.

The undergrowth rustled as Vincent pushed through. The dog ran over to Christian, who knelt down to pat him. "Hey, boy, you did everything I asked. Everything and more."

Vincent's tail wagged so fiercely that his whole body shook.

"You two know each other?" Hugo said, half-joking.

Christian didn't take it as a joke, though. Still looking at Vincent, he said, "We go back awhile, don't we, boy?"

The dog just wriggled some more.

"Awhile, huh." Then, tentatively, as if asking about an indiscretion, Hugo said, "Are you stuck here, like Michael?"

Christian drew himself up to his full height, slanted light shining through him as if he were a smudged window. "No, not like Michael. I don't have to stay here."

"So why are you here, then?"

"To help my son. And to help you."

Hugo glanced down at Jack for just a second. When he looked back up, Christian was gone.

Gently Hugo slid Jack's body to the leaf-covered ground. His shirt front was streaked with Jack's blood, and in in earlier times that would have made him sick, but not now. Jack still looked as he were sunk into a light sleep, and the odor of roses had returned.

Hugo let out out a long breath, then hoisted Jack across his shoulders. The body was surprisingly loose-limbed, and not anywhere near as heavy as he expected. Or maybe he wasn't as tired as he thought. Either way, if he made tracks, he'd get to the beach by evening. So he set out, Vincent trotting along behind.

* * *

><p>By the time Ben and Desmond neared the camp where Rose and Bernard had made their solitary home for three years, twilight was fast approaching.<p>

"You want to hear something odd?" Ben asked, as they forded the shallow river which flowed down the center of the Island, dividing it in half.

Desmond was lost in his own thoughts, silent, so Ben went on. "Notice this stream. It's flowing down to the ocean, as you would think it would. But it's the same stream which flowed into the Heart of the Island, when we were up there."

"How long have you lived here, brother?"

"Over thirty years."

"And you know what would happen if we just turned around, and headed up-stream again?"

"Nothing," replied Ben.

"That's right. Exactly nothing. Because the Heart won't be there, not for us. Let me give you some advice, Ben. Even I can't go back there, not without Hurley. Not that I'd want to, God knows. But just forget that the Heart is there."

Instead of answering, Ben pulled Desmond's arm, hard. The stream dashed over large rocks, picking up speed until it abruptly ended in a jagged waterfall. Water cascaded over the edge, falling at least thirty feet. Fallen trees surrounded the banks, with more trees and rock debris strewn at the bottom. A huge chunk of the land had just fallen, and the once-gentle slope was now a cliff.

"This isn't a good sign," Ben said.

Desmond looked equally worried. The two men picked their way around boulders and fallen logs, until they came to the small clearing where Rose and Bernard made their house.

Or where their house had once stood. The tall peaked structure, thatched with palm fronds and decorated with shells and bits of colored glass, now stood in a collapsed heap. One whole wall had smashed the big vegetable garden. There would be no harvest now.

Bernard was picking through the rubble, while Rose crouched on a camp stool, her face in her hands.

"Rose! Bernard! It's me, Desmond!"

Bernard raised his arm in greeting, but Rose just sat.

"Thank God you two are all right," Desmond said.

"Hello, Ben," said Bernard, giving Ben an up-and-down look that was not quite friendly.

Ben nodded a greeting, trying to not let the cold reception bother him. "It looks like you could use some help."

Rose looked up and snapped, "We don't need anything from you."

"Sweetheart," Bernard said, but she cut him off.

"This is all their fault. We just wanted a peaceful life. We minded our own business."

"I know," Desmond broke in. "But we are all on this Island together."

"What's left of it," Rose said.

Bernard put his hand on her shoulder. "Rose, it's just a house. We can build a new house." At first it looked as though she might toss his hand off, but instead she wrapped her arms around his waist and cried silently, her body shaking with sobs. Bernard held her close against his stomach, and over her bowed head said to Ben and Desmond, "Would you like some tea?"

"Let me collect some wood for your fire," Ben said at once, even though there was a large wood-pile right next to the house. He was anxious to be away from the two of them, not wanting to be blamed.

Rose looked up and said, "You stay put, Benjamin. I don't want you out of my sight."

"Better let me do that," said Bernard.

Rose stood up, and in a low, angry voice said to Desmond, "How could you bring him here?"

"Everything's changed," Desmond said. "He's with us now. He's with Hurley."

"All this drama. Next thing you're going to tell me Jack went off and got himself killed."

"Aye, that's exactly what I'm going to tell you. But Rose, you have to trust me on this. We all have our flaws, and God knows I have mine. But there aren't many of us left, and we're going to have to pull together."

Ben stood silent, watching first Rose, then Bernard, then Rose again.

Rose threw her hands into the air, then headed over to the outdoor kitchen, which of all the structures still stood. Desmond followed her.

Bernard wouldn't meet Ben's eyes as he searched through a jumbled pile, then pulled out a tea-kettle. "Plenty of rain-water in the past few hours. That's one good thing, at least."

"I'm sorry for what happened this morning-" Ben started to say, but Bernard wouldn't let him finish.

"Just tell me that Locke, or whatever that was, is gone."

"He is. The monster is gone. I saw his body."

Bernard threw a generous handful of dried brown rose pods into the kettle. In a neutral voice he said, "Rose hips are the house special around Chez Nadler. Which reminds me, what about that young woman, the blonde? Juliet, I think her name was. She, Sawyer, Kate, they all came by a week, week and a half ago."

"Juliet didn't make it, Bernard."

"Guess that bomb didn't work out so well, did it?"

Ben smiled, wry and without humor. "I guess that's a matter of interpretation. You're not in 1977 anymore."

"Not that it matters a damn to Rose or I. Or poor Juliet."

Ben ignored this sally. "Also, Sawyer, Kate, and Claire have left the Island."

"We saw the plane. So that's what that was."

Eventually the tea kettle whistled, ordinary after earthquake and chaos.

Rose came over to Ben and Bernard. "You men might as well parlay, while I bring you some supper." She shot a firm look at Bernard. "I'm not doing this for us. I'm doing it for Hurley. That poor boy's been through enough."

She brought them cold pancakes made from mashed taro root and ground nuts, garnished with dried banana slices, and laid the food out on large, glossy green leaves. When Ben praised it, a hint of a smile broke through her severe expression like sun through a storm-cloud. "It's just leftovers from breakfast. I figured you boys would be hungry with all that traipsing through the jungle. So tell me what the hell has been going on here."

Ben opened his mouth, then looked at Desmond and didn't say anything, waiting instead for Desmond to start.

"The tea's fine, Rose," Desmond said. "Not Earl Grey, but then again, what is?"

"Don't try to sweet-talk me, young man. My house is broken. The path to our stream is full of trees and boulders. Bernard can't even get down to our fishing spot on the beach, because there's a cliff instead of a path. It's all fallen down around our ears and I for one want to know why."

"Aye, then," Desmond said. Then his voice took on a sing-song tone, as if he were telling a very old story. "You know that this Island is a special place. Well, it's more than that, because there are many special places in the world."

"Like Uluru," Bernard said to Rose. "Remember?"

"But that was nonsense. We traveled all the way to Australia, and that man turned out to be a fake. I bet he bought all those crutches and stuck them up on his wall. I don't believe he could heal anybody."

"Aye, there are a lot of fakes out there," Desmond continued. "But the places themselves, Uluru, Glastonbury, Mount Shasta in America, they're all part of a great necklace which stretches across the throat of the world. The clasp, the thing which holds the whole thing together, is the Island. And the Island has a center, a Heart. The most special place of all. Locke wanted to unclasp it and cut the string, so that all those pearls would fall, and none of it would hold together anymore."

Ben said in a low voice, "Things fall apart. The center cannot hold. Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world. The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere the ceremony of innocence is drowned."

Bernard got it at once. "You would almost think Yeats had visited this Island."

"There was a man, a man I served all of my adult life," Ben said. "His name was Jacob, and he ruled everything here. It wasn't until recently that I actually met him, and when I did, I hated him." Ben didn't want to mention the part about killing him. Not here, not now.

"So this Jacob let all these things happen?" Rose asked, anger rising in her voice. "Jacob ruled this Island, but he couldn't fight Locke? He let all those people die?" She stood up, really angry now. "What kind of a monster is he?"

"Was," Ben said. "Jacob's dead."

In a quiet voice, Desmond said to Ben, "No more lies, brother."

"All right. He didn't die. I killed him."

"How do you kill a god?"' Bernard asked. "Which is what he sounded like."

"Oh, there are ways." Some of the old chill came back into Ben's voice. He could hope all he wanted, but the iciness in his soul was still there, like a wet garment which he couldn't shake off.

Desmond broke the silence. "He wasn't a god. When I was down in the Heart, that pool at the Island's center, I had a little flash of him for just a few seconds. He was born on this Island, a person like us. This great power was given to him, and in turn he gave it to Jack."

"So, Jack was supposed to save the Island from Locke?" Rose said.

"Aye, that's right. But I had to be the one to actually go down to the bottom of that well and pull the plug, so to speak. Even so, it was too much for me, and I couldn't fix it. So the Island started to break up."

"That's where Jack came in," Ben added. "The ceremony of innocence wasn't drowned after all. Jack passed his power on to Hugo, and then climbed down into the well. Whatever he did down there, it put everything to rights."

Rose turned to Desmond. "But you said that Jack got himself killed."

"That he did, God rest him."

"So whatever Jack did down there, it killed him."

Desmond nodded.

"Where's Jack now?" Bernard asked, his face gentle and sad.

Ben said, "With Hugo. He's taking him to the beach camp, your old one."

"To lay him to rest," Desmond added. "Isn't that where your cemetery was?"

"That's right," Rose said. "But Hurley's all alone down there, with a body? We can't leave him there like that. We've got to go down and-"

Bernard interrupted her. "Rose, night's going to fall in about thirty minutes. We're not tramping through the jungle in the pitch dark."

"Well, we can at least do a little packing while there's still light. Then we'll go down to the beach first thing in the morning. You two, get with Bernard and root through this mess, find what we need. Bernard, you remember that big shawl we bought in Bali, the one we thought was too pretty to use? It's in that blue suitcase over there, where our east wall used to be. We'll want that. And don't forget the tea kettle."

"Are we moving in?" Bernard said.

"Well, we can't stay here."

Bernard shrugged and said to the others, "That's what I've been trying to tell her."

(_continued_)


	3. Flight of the Phoenix

**Chapter 3: Flight of the Phoenix**

Every time a plane takes off, it feels like a miracle.

Sure, the computer-wielding pencil-necked boys in the short-sleeve shirts can calculate every inch of wingspan, every yard of runway, every kilogram of mass, every pound of jet fuel to make the magic happen. But whether it's the first flight or the thousandth, there's nothing in life, and maybe not even in death either, to compare with how the heart soars when those wheels finally leave the runway, when tons of metal defy the bonds of gravity, and claim a place among the birds and the angels.

So thought Frank Lapidus, hand on full throttle as Ajira 316 thundered off the cracked and broken Hydra Island runway to become airborne. And while he knew in his head that gravity still ruled, and any pilot who forgot that was a dead one, in his heart he rejoiced and was glad, because he was damned sure that this flight was the exception.

* * *

><p>Kate Austen sat back in her wide, comfortable leather seat, not so much hearing as feeling the sharp, oddly high-pitched whine of the 737's engines. She had to admit, it was a hell of a way to get into first-class.<p>

After the first stomach-lurching banking maneuver, the plane came around level. Then Frank started to circle around the Island, and Kate gripped Claire's hand even tighter. High jungle-covered cliffs swung into view, terrifyingly close to the plane. The mountains gave way to grey, smoke-covered land which merged into a volcano-studded sea-coast, where lava hit the ocean and billowed up into clouds of steam.

Then the plane swung around and once again came all too close to another set of mountains, these lashed by storms. A huge chunk of cliff-side broke off easily as a chunk of cake, then fell into the sea in several pieces.

One more time around they went, and this time Kate didn't look. What the hell was Frank doing? Across the aisle from her, Miles Straume sat with eyes closed and a self-satisfied grin. Kate strained around around to get a glimpse of Sawyer, but the first-class seats were wide, and she didn't want to let go of Claire's hand.

"Miles!" Frank bellowed into the intercom. "Get your ass up here, now!" Then, as if Frank knew how panicked he'd sounded, he changed to the more typical, lazy tone that pilots adopt. "Nothing to worry about, folks. I just need another pair of eyes."

Miles seemed to wake up from his reverie, but didn't move at first.

"You heard him," Kate hissed, giving him a sharp poke. "Get on up there."

"Yes, ma'am," Miles said, smirking. When he got to the cockpit and strapped himself into the co-pilot's seat, through the open cockpit door Kate heard him exclaim, "Holy crap," and Frank shushhed him.

Whatever it was, she sure as hell couldn't do anything about it.

"What's going on?" Claire said to Kate.

"I don't know."

"He saw something, didn't he?"

"Well, whatever it was, we're still flying. I guess that's what matters."

Sawyer approached, then sat down in the now-empty aisle seat which Miles had vacated. "I think ol' Chesty just wants some company up there. Maybe one of you ladies could tie on your stewardess apron and bring him a tall cold drink. I sure know I could use one." He grinned at both women, flashing dimples and trying to project relaxed charm, but his voice shook and his eyes were wet.

Kate rolled her eyes, thought about getting indignant, then just shook her head. "Sawyer, you never stop, do you?"

"Never, Peaches," he said, and now he sounded better, farther from tears than before.

All at once the plane dropped a few feet, one of those lurches which catapults your stomach up to the roof of your mouth. Then the plane plummeted again, farther this time, and the engine whine grew louder as the bumpiness increased. Frank said something over the intercom, but it was lost in the squawk of interference and engine noise. If whatever he said was meant to be reassuring, it wasn't.

Outside, dark grey clouds surrounded the plane in a thick cocoon. Lighting flashes played off the distant clouds, teasing the plane with occasional sparks that came all too close for comfort. The cabin lights were off, and now the grey gloom covered everything.

Then the engines cut out.

For a fraction of a second, the deafening silence held them all suspended. No more choppy vibrations of the fuselage, no more of that weird alternate engine whine and rattle, no more whoosh of wind against wings. It wasn't until Ajira 316 was blanketed in complete and total silence that Kate realized how noisy the plane had been.

She didn't reflect for very long, because all at once the plane went into a nosedive.

It was worse than any state fair roller-coaster, and worse even than the Oceanic 815 crash. Back then, Kate had been too terrified, then too intent on strapping an oxygen mask onto the unconscious marshal chained next to her, to worry about what was going to happen next. Now, sudden, sickening experience prepared her for the swift spiraling fall, the pressure of gravity against her chest so hard she could scarcely breathe, and then the horrific rush of first air, then people being sucked out of a fragmenting plane.

Claire gripped her hand back now, so tightly that their two hands might have merged into one. In what Kate was sure were the last seconds of her life, thoughts tumbled out, _Oh my God this is it, __bye Aaron baby, __Mom, __I'm sorry, __for all of it. _Kate hoped that someone out there could hear her, and that death would just come quick and get it over with.

Suddenly, as if something which had been muted wasn't anymore, the airplane sounds broke over them like waves, louder than before. Kate and Claire both screamed now, their cries lost in a vortex of sound. Then, just as when the roller-coaster hits its lowest point and gets thrust upward to rise once again, the plane's nose lifted, shaking as if some gigantic child flung it back and forth like a toy. The clouds outside were so black now, it might have been night.

The plane continued to climb with a few last fierce shakes. In between tremors, Kate drew in great sucking breaths and dared to look around. The cockpit lights shone like gems against the black, and the few running-lights in the cabin gave off a faint glow, but otherwise everything was covered by almost complete darkness. Claire sat with head back, eyes screwed shut, and tears ran down her cheeks.

Gradually the clanking, crashing noises stopped, and the plane evened out. The clouds outside brightened up from dark grey to pale, then thinned into whitish streaks. Kate relaxed her death-grip on Claire and the armrest, as small rays of sun broke through the clouds. Now she could dare to look over at Sawyer, who sat white and shaking. She reached across the aisle to take his hand, and almost at the same instant, she let Claire go for the first time since taking off.

"Thought we just about bought the farm," Sawyer muttered, clinging to Kate's hand almost as hard as she herself had clung to Claire.

From the cockpit Frank said, "Everybody OK back there?" Then, Frank must have forgotten to switch off the intercom, for he added in a low voice obviously not meant to be heard by those in their seats, "Son of a bitch, Miles, I think we just witnessed a damn miracle. We should have hit the drink by now." Frank must have realized his mistake, because he added, "OK, you heard that. But it looks like smooth sailing for the next three, four hours from here till Fiji. Can't give you folks an ETA 'cause I don't really know what time it is." He laughed with a jagged tone which Kate recognized as borderline hysteria. Then the intercom squealed once more and fell silent.

The plane flew on smoothly and evenly now, as if held aloft on a cushion of air, and even the weird whining engine noises were gone. Sun poured through the windows and outside everything shone with a pure, seamless blue. Claire had leaned back in her seat with closed eyes, although Kate didn't see how she could sleep. Kate stretched over Claire and stared at the tiny white ripples sprinkled across the vast ocean, where a ship like a miniature toy cut a thin white-threaded path across the surface of the blue sea.

For the first time since they'd climbed aboard Ajira 316, Kate thought she actually was going to live.

Now that panic no longer held Kate in its iron grip, she looked around the cabin, taking long deep breaths. It wasn't Claire's fault, but she really was a bit ripe. Her tattered plaid shirt and dark jeans weren't just mud-streaked; they were actually stiff with dirt so meshed with the fabric itself, that it might have been woven in.

Kate knew she was no prize either, with her soggy jeans, and t-shirt still saturated with her own blood. Fortunately, carry-on bags littered the middle and tail sections, flung out of the overhead bins when the plane had first gone down. Maybe she'd get lucky and find something clean for her and Claire both.

She tried to get up as carefully as possible, until it became obvious that Claire wasn't going to stir. As Kate stepped into the aisle, Sawyer touched her arm, then raised his eyebrows in a question. "Ladies' room," Kate answered.

"She OK?" Sawyer whispered, looking over at Claire.

"I think so."

"She's probably really pissed at me," he said, rueful. Twice Sawyer had left Claire behind, first when escaping from John Locke's camp, the second time when Sawyer shut the submarine hatch while Claire was still on the dock. Yet here she was.

"We'll find out, won't we?" Kate said. "She came with us at least. That's something."

Sawyer nodded again, apparently still not convinced, and Kate took advantage of his hesitation to slip away towards the middle section lavatory. She passed Richard Alpert but didn't speak to him, as he sat back in his seat, eyes closed, lips moving silently in what looked like prayer.

In the lavatory, Kate found that either the water tanks were dry, or the pumps didn't work, for there was no water in the tap and the toilet wouldn't flush. Wrinkling her nose at the smell, Kate searched through one bag after another until she found what she was looking for.

She pulled off her wet, bloodstained tee, thinking she'd have a look at her wound, which had started to itch. Please don't let it be infected, she thought as she carried a clean shirt to the lavatory. She was used to the toilet smell now, but if they were going to be in-air for hours, it was going to get worse.

_OK, might as well look_, she thought, and braced herself.

Right between her left collarbone and shoulder there stretched a thin red line of healed skin, with eight tiny thread loops hanging, useless.

"Oh, my God," Kate said, not knowing how loudly she'd spoken. She touched the well-healed scar experimentally, ready to snatch her hand back at the slightest twinge, but there was nothing except a faint itch where the threads dangled. That was where Jack had sewn her up, when he had said in a calm, compassionate voice, "I have to do this, or it'll get infected," as the needle burned through her skin.

Suddenly Sawyer loomed behind her, his tall frame filling the tiny bathroom's mirror. She was so flummoxed about her wound that she didn't even yell at him for sneaking up on her. But Sawyer didn't make any wisecracks about her standing there in her bra, staring at herself in the mirror. Instead, he gaped at the same thing she did.

"Yesterday that was quite a hole, as I recall."

"I don't believe it. How can this be?"

"How's your arm and all that?" said Sawyer, all concern now, no wisecracking at all in his tone. "You were sure favorin' it earlier."

She rolled her left shoulder forward and back, extended her arm outward and in. There was no pain at all. "It's fine. Like it never happened."

"'Cept for the souvenirs there," he said, pointing to her stitches. "Want me to take 'em out for you? 'Course, maybe you'd rather do the honors yourself."

Kate stared at the dangling black threads and reeled, suddenly lightheaded. Shaking, she leaned up against the tiny sink and tried not to faint, but stumbled anyway.

Sawyer steered her to a row of middle-section seats where she flopped back, eyes closed, worn down by exhaustion, shaking. While he rummaged through the first-aid kit, an irrational thought seized her that these tiny thread-loops were all that connected her to her old life with Jack, and that when they were cut, everything would be severed for good.

But not entirely, because she had the living proof of his final gift to her. "Now you're like me," Jacob had said to Jack, and that had made no sense at the time. But somehow, maybe when Jack had touched her hand, or maybe during that final cliff-side kiss (it had to be during that kiss, like no other kiss she'd ever shared with Jack before, like holding wind and fire and light in her arms all at once) it had happened.

How else would she have been able to use both arms as well as she had, to leap off that high rugged cliff, swim like a seal through rough surf, pull herself hand-over-hand up the _Elizabeth's_ tow rope, then swim to Hydra Island's shore?

She'd wanted him to give it back, to just let the Island sink. How wrong she was. As soon as Sawyer sat down beside her, a small pair of surgical scissors in hand, she started to cry.

"Hey, relax, I ain't even touched you yet." Sawyer handed her a large piece of gauze, and she blew her nose noisily.

"Jack did this, you know."

"I know, Freckles, I watched him stitch you up."

"No, not those. It was only yesterday morning. Now look at it."

Sawyer hung back for a few heartbeats, staring at the healed scar as if suddenly afraid to touch it. "That's some mojo." Then, with a face full of pain which he couldn't conceal, he said, "If the doc was able to do that, maybe he could, y'know, fix himself."

She hadn't even dared to think it, but Sawyer saying it made it feel almost real. In a small voice she said, "Maybe."

"So can I start now?"

"Uh, huh." The antiseptic poured cool and refreshing over her skin, wetting her bra, but she didn't care. Even so, when Sawyer delicately inserted the tiny scissor blade into the first loop, then gently drew the thread out with tweezers, she sobbed again.

"Damn it, Freckles, did I hurt you?"

"No," she sniffled, feeling nothing but a thin, swift tickle and a slight itch as the thread pulled through intact flesh. "I barely felt it."

"Don't scare me like that again. I ain't exactly an expert."

So she sat quiet, but still grieving inside as Sawyer drew the remaining seven loops from her skin, and each one seemed to pull directly out of her heart.

* * *

><p>Kate tossed the suitcase she'd found onto a row of seats, and headed back to her own. Richard was no longer in his seat, but his back was visible through the open cockpit door, where he was obviously deep in conversation with Lapidus. When she got back to her own row, Claire with a timid smile handed her an Ajira water bottle. Sawyer had already guzzled his, but he lifted the empty bottle anyway in a kind of toast and said, "Somebody around here knows how to strap on a pair of stewardess pumps."<p>

"Thanks, Claire," Kate said, suddenly aware of how thirsty she was. "And you're showing your age, Sawyer. They're flight attendants now, and they haven't worn high heels in years."

Claire headed towards the aisle. "Don't sit, Kate, I'm headed for the lav."

"Good, I'll go with you. I found something you might like."

When Kate showed Claire the blue jeans, navy tank, and grey button-down shirt, Claire backed away, clutching her own ragged shirt tightly across her chest. "No thanks," she said, face blank, avoiding Kate's glance.

"Oh, sorry, if you wanted something else. I didn't mean to pick for you." Kate was about to say that was her operating mode now, because if she let a three-year old choose his outfits, they'd never get out the door on time. Then she realized how bad that would sound, on so many levels, rubbing it in that Kate had raised Aaron, and Claire hadn't. So all Kate said was, "Look, that black wheel-y suitcase over there's full of stuff in our size. Just take what you want."

But Claire still planted herself like a stubborn statue in the aisle. "I'm fine, really."

Kate had little time to argue with her, because Richard joined them in the aisle, his dark face long and serious, followed by Sawyer.

"This is the situation, ladies," Richard said in a tight, tense voice. "We're losing fuel. We're not going to make it to Fiji."

"Here we go again," said Sawyer.

Kate leaned up against a seat, reeling again, an ocean of thoughts flooding her mind. They were going to die. Or they weren't going to die right away, but when they broke through that puffy sea of white clouds through which they'd been flying for the past ten minutes, below them would be the Island, and this time it would suck them in like a vortex. Death in the ocean, death in the jungle, take your pick. All she could squeak out was, "My God, how long?"

"We have about thirty minutes, maybe an hour if Frank Lapidus is as good a pilot as he says he is, and can avoid headwinds. But we've got to get buckled in, because he's reducing altitude." Richard answered.

"What about sending some kind of distress call?"

"Radio's down, Freckles. And navigational instruments, too. Frank's doin' it the old-fashioned way, with eyeballs and the sun."

Claire perched on the opposite seat's armrest, a faint smile on her face. "So, _he_ got what he wanted after all. _He_ always does."

Kate knew exactly who, or what Claire was talking about, and it wasn't the pilot. "He's not going to get a goddamn thing anymore, Claire. Because I shot him dead, and good riddance."

Claire looked around for confirmation, and Sawyer said, "Saw it with my own eyes."

"Dead?" Richard said, his initial mission of delivering some very bad news set aside for the moment. "How, though?"

Through clenched teeth Kate said, "With a bullet right through the chest."

Claire stood there, silent and very pale, tears starting in her eyes. "But- That doesn't work. I know, I tried, twice." Her face twisted in fear, sorrow, Kate couldn't tell which.

"Well, third time's a charm," Sawyer said. "But we got a more immediate problem here than a dead smoke monster."

Richard added, "Frank's trying to find someplace for us to land."

"He figures if he got us down on that runway on Hydra Island, he can land a plane just about anywhere."

"So," Richard went on, "We get back to our seats, strap in, and pray." And then, as an afterthought, he turned and said, "And we keep our mouths shut, because there are going to be questions. A lot of them, but there's only one answer."

"I've gotta talk to my lawyer," Sawyer volunteered.

"That's right. If we get out of this," said Richard.

"Why are you telling us this now, Richard?" Kate asked.

"Because I don't know what's going to happen in the next half-hour. We could crash. We could get split up. And if we do, there's only one sentence that comes out of your mouth, and that's I want to talk to Daniel Norton, of Agostino and Norton, Los Angeles."

"Good Lord," Kate said. "I know him."

"We got it, Richard," Sawyer said. "Name, rank, and serial number. Come on, gals, let's pack it in."

But Sawyer didn't go back to first class. Instead, he slid into a middle section row, right up to the window. "If I'm gonna smack down in the ocean, I want to see its face before I go."

Kate looked at Richard, desperate for some contradiction or protest, but Richard only said, "I'm going back up to the cockpit, to the jump seat. Frank's going to need all the eyes he can get up there."

Claire slid right in next to Sawyer, taking the middle seat. So there was nothing left for Kate to do but join them. Both Kate and Sawyer each took one of Claire's hands, and then reached around her to grasp each others' as well, forming a circle with Claire at the center. The plane was noisier back in coach, and as Frank descended further into the thick cloud cover, it started to jiggle around, then bounce.

No one spoke for what felt like a long time, and no one let go of the other's hand. Then the cloud cover finally broke, and the plane headed out into clear skies again, apparently northwest by the position of the sun. Kate peered over Sawyer and there was the blue ocean, looking awfully close this time.

Then the plane swooped down in one of those banking maneuvers pilots use when they approach an airport. The plane swung around once, then again. As it settled into its low approach, a small bit of land appeared in the window. An island, yes, but a strange-looking one, long and drawn out, curved almost like a fish-hook. As they circled once more, Kate could see the tiny pale-brown airstrip set right at where the curve of the fish-hook would be.

The intercom crackled, and Frank came on, the joy in his voice coming across even through the static. "Something, or someone just saved our bacon."

Claire leaned over Sawyer, Kate leaned over Claire, and the three of them peered as close to the window as possible.

"Stay buckled in, folks, 'cause we're swinging around a few times, just to let them know we're here," Frank said. "Still no radio. But I see a control tower."

"Oh, God," Kate said, "I don't believe it."

The grin in Frank's voice was unmistakeable. "Welcome, friends, to Bonriki International Airport on the Tarawa Atoll, in the Republic of Kiribati."

"Kir-i-bass?" Sawyer repeated, staring at Claire and Kate. "Where the hell's that?"

"I don't know," Kate said. "And I don't care. Because anyplace is better than going down into the ocean."

Sawyer looked up, a touch of grimness around the corners of his smile. "Just remember, Freckles, and you too, Claire. Name, rank, and serial number."

(_continued_)


	4. Welcome to Tarawa

**Chapter 4: Welcome to Tarawa**

Ajira 316 circled three, then four times above the Tarawa Atoll. The thin spit of land curved like the green hook you'd use to angle for Leviathan, if he'd ever emerge from the blue ocean depths to take the bait.

"What the hell you doing, Cap'n?" Miles said.

"We got no radio, so we're giving them a chance to know we're here." Frank aimed for the tiny grey strip which made up Bonriki Airport's single runway, barely long enough to accommodate the 737.

Miles squinted down to the runway below. "Oh, I think they know we're here, all right."

A white van and a bigger blue one with the back cut off ambled down the airstrip. Nearby, a small group of people crossed it on foot. Frank cursed under his breath, face twisted with anxiety. "Damn it. Land on vans and people, or stall. Some choice." He pulled the plane out of its approach and circled around for one final time.

The two vans pulled off the tarmac all at once, each one going to either side, and the people scattered for the nearby frontage road. Frank had a clear shot on the second approach, but landing with no communications still felt uncomfortably like flying blind. Worse, some smaller planes were scattered about the runway near the terminal. If one of those little island hoppers tried to take off, he'd mow it right down.

Sometimes Lady Luck was like a one-hour stand you picked up at a truck stop, and sometimes she stayed the whole night and even made you breakfast the next morning. This was one of those times. Frank lowered the flaps and aimed the 737's nose right where it needed to be, then neatly touched down on the bumpy, pothole-laden runway with only a little bit of a skid. It had just rained, and even though water sprayed everywhere, including on some people standing by the side of the runway, they still cheered as Frank stopped the plane just a couple of hundred yards shy of where the asphalt ended. Beyond that there was only a thin strip of sand, and then the blue ocean.

"OK, in we go," Frank told Miles and Richard as he backed up to turn around, preparing to taxi over to the terminal. Then he stopped at once, because some other vehicles had left the terminal and were bouncing along the runway towards the plane, kicking up spray and dirt as they went. The convoy was led by a battered old police cruiser with flashing lights, followed by a couple of white Toyota pick-up trucks full of men. A few had flashlights, and they waved them out of the front passenger windows, signaling for the 737 to stop.

From his own window, Sawyer saw a flood of several dozen people run from the terminal out onto the frontage road alongside the runway. Many of them were children, and the kids jumped up and down in excitement. Their mothers followed, laughing and pointing at the plane. He said to Kate and Claire, "If we were terrorists, these folks'd be gone by now. They're like fish in a barrel."

Frank cut the engines, leaving only the low hum of the air conditioning. "Here goes nothing," he said. He opened the front fuselage door and stuck his head out, hands raised above his head. "Ajira 316, destination GUM, emergency, emergency, May Day."

Richard left the cockpit and dashed back to Sawyer, Claire, and Kate. "OK, remember what I said. Nobody breathes a word except 'Dan Norton, my attorney, Los Angeles.'"

Kate said, "I'm going up front. I want to see what's going on. Come on, Claire."

Richard protested, "Kate, I don't think-"

Scooting past Richard, Sawyer said, "You don't know her like I do, _ese_. She gets like this, you just gotta roll with it."

Kate picked up the black suitcase full of clothes, but Claire dropped her own filthy shoulder bag onto a seat.

"You don't want your bag, honey?" Kate said.

"It's got knives in it, and some ammo besides." Claire brushed past Richard and headed up the aisle to the front fuselage exit, leaving Kate with an astonished expression.

"She seems to understand what our situation is," Richard said aside to Kate, before proceeding up the aisle himself.

Someone on the ground must have called for Frank inflate the evacuation chute, because Frank started shaking his head and waving his arms. "No slides. No slides. Slides don't work."

Everyone gathered round Frank as he said over his shoulder, "They want us to stay here and wait. I'll keep the AC on as long as I can. My guess is they're going to tow in some stairs."

The Ajira survivors were crowded like sardines into the back of one of the pick-up trucks, with a large older man in a white shirt and surfing shorts who clung to a very old pistol. It was the only gun in sight. They rode in silence over the bumpy airstrip until they reached a small stub of runway which led towards the terminal. A couple of men escorted them past a yellow hand-lettered "Customs and Immigration" sign, into the smaller of a couple of buildings joined by an open-air passageway. There, in a fenced-in rear area under a steep thatched roof, they were made to sit and wait.

The place reminded Claire of a huge picnic shelter. Little birds flew among the rafters, cheeping loudly in tune with all the general excitement. They must have made some nests up there, because the birds darted to and fro, disappearing into the shadows where the high rafters came to acutely-angled points, only to swirl out again to perch on the crossbeams. The picnic tables on which they sat were decorated with spatters of bird droppings.

Kate said, "That was great, Frank. You got us down."

In an aw-shucks voice Frank said, "That was nothing. 'Bout five years ago, a buddy of mine had to bring a 747 down here when he lost an engine. He misjudged how wet the runway was and wound up half in the ocean on far end. Had about fifty aboard but everybody made it to shore. Didn't want to mention it while we were getting ready to land."

Sawyer brushed off a corner of the picnic table and perched on it, stretching his legs. "We mightily appreciate that, Cap'n."

"He said they were good people here," Frank added.

It was very hot, and the heavy, humid winds did nothing to cool them. For a brief time they remained under the thatch roof, unguarded. Miles sidled up to Sawyer and Frank and said, "What do you think? That old jabonie on the truck, his gun was from like World War II or something. I bet there aren't even any bullets in it. What do you say we grab that puddle jumper over there and just fly right on out of here?"

"Are you fucking kidding me?" Frank said.

Miles didn't get a chance to answer, because two large Micronesians appeared, wearing khaki police uniforms and genial, baffled expressions. The taller, older one introduced himself as Chief Birobo, then wrote down their names and countries of origin onto a dog-eared spiral note-pad. The young, fat one was Officer Nariki. He politely took Kate's suitcase from her hand and set it aside.

Then Chief Biribo asked for their passports.

Frank handed his over. It was stuck together from weeks of Island sand and damp, but the older policeman carefully pulled it apart. Then he looked around at the group, where it seemed that no one else had one.

"We're Americans," Sawyer said. "You speaka the English? I want the American embassy, you know, the US ambassador."

"Americans," Officer Nariki said to Chief Biribo, rolling his eyes.

Trying to hide his incredulity, Biribo said to the group in faintly-accented Australian English, "All of you lost your passports? What, you get mugged in a bar in Agana or something?"

"We were headed for Guam," Frank put in. "We never made it to Agana to get mugged."

Biribo nodded, then said to Nariki, "We're gonna have to call Suva." He made it sound like the equivalent of cleaning out the septic tank when it was six months overdue.

"Who's Suva?" Sawyer said under his breath to Frank.

"Not who. It's where the US embassy is, in Fiji."

Then it was Claire's turn. "I'm Australian," she said, and Nariki smiled, wide and warm. She smiled back, and suddenly everyone in the area relaxed a bit.

"You a tourist?" Nariki said, his plump face still fixed in a grin that was beginning to look silly. "We get lots of Aussies here."

"Sort of a tourist," she answered. Then she said in a calm voice, "I'm going to get my passport out now. It's OK." She took off her ratty top shirt, and Nariki sidled in closer for a better look. Biribo tensed up, though, in case she tried to pull something.

Claire ripped the shirt down the side seam, and from an inside pocket sewn into the garment, pulled out a plastic baggie and handed it to Nariki along with another wide, charming smile. At first he didn't see the plastic-wrapped document, being otherwise preoccupied with the sight of Claire in a tank top, but she practically pushed it towards him.

He dug through the multiple zip-loc bags and finally got to the treasure inside: an M-series holographic Australian passport, not that much the worse for wear.

"Son of a bitch," Sawyer said under his breath to Kate.

"Well, I'll be. It's why she didn't want to change her shirt."

The two policemen exchanged interested glances, then spoke to each other in their own language as they examined Claire's passport. They were joined by another Kiribati man, an old one with a pompous, officious bearing, dressed in a wrinkled, dark-grey suit. Nariki pointed to Claire and Frank, but the older man shook his head in disagreement. Claire heard the word "Americans" bandied about and then, more chillingly, "Homeland Security."

"Smells like trouble," Miles said to Richard.

"Miles, the only trouble here so far has been you," Richard muttered between clenched teeth.

"Hey, that's not fair," Miles protested.

"Yeah, Ricky Ricardo, give the man a break," Sawyer said.

Richard just looked off in the distance, with a tense expression. The man in the suit gestured towards the crowd, which was pressed up against the rail that separated the open-air part of the Bonriki terminal from the tarmac. He apparently wanted them to disperse, but the two policemen ignored him. The crowd wasn't going anywhere, either, as this was probably more entertainment than they'd seen in months. Finally, with an expression of disgust, the suited man walked away towards a small office, the set of his back and shoulders clearly saying, Your problem, then.

"We got to search you now," Biribo said to the group, sounding genuinely sorry for this breach of hospitality.

"We'll look over the plane later," Nariki added helpfully. "Maybe tomorrow."

Kate and Claire looked at each other, full of apprehension. They had both watched people get pulled out of lines at LAX and the Sydney airport, and those selected for special treatment generally didn't have a good time of it. Claire was especially sorry she'd smiled in such a friendly way at Officer Nariki. But his round face showed only sympathy now, except for the occasional annoyed look which he darted towards the office of the suited man, who was apparently some kind of airport official.

"Come on," said Biribo to the two women. He handed Claire's passport back to her, and she slid it into her trouser pocket at once.

An instant of panic crossed Kate's face. "Do we have to split up?" she said, looking over at Sawyer, who was being led in the opposite direction.

Claire took Kate's hand in hers, giving it a little squeeze of reassurance. Across the terminal, it looked like Sawyer was starting to protest their separation too, but Richard laid a hand on his shoulder and apparently was saying something to calm him down.

Biribo led Kate and Claire around the back of the building to a large room which held a hard wooden chair, and an old upholstered wing-back which had seen better days. In between rested a couch, also old but in surprisingly good shape, the few tears in its cracked black faux-leather mended with strips of duct tape.

"You wait here," Biribo commanded, but his tone was gentle. Behind him the door slid shut, unlocked.

Claire curled up on one end of the couch, while Kate settled herself in the wingback chair and said, "This must be the VIP lounge."

Claire coughed out a small laugh. Above them, the rusted fan beat out an irregular whump-whump as its uneven rotations spun away the minutes.

Finally Kate said, "Didn't see that one coming, with your passport."

"I've always had it. Ever since-" and here Claire stopped, not wanting to say "the 815 crash," but they both knew. "I found my purse that first day, remember? No hairbrush, but I had all my papers. Then it never left my pocket, not for a long time, not even after I went to live with _my friend_. Finally I sewed it into my shirt."

"Why?"

"Aaron was gone. All of you were gone. It let me remember who I was, that I hadn't always been… this. Like this. Crazy."

"I don't think you're crazy. I've been to places where- Well, let's just say that I've seen some really crazy people, and you're not it."

"Look, I jumped you, didn't I?" There, she'd said it, and it was out in the open. Up till now Kate had been acting like Claire hadn't stretched across Kate's chest with a knife up to Kate's throat.

"You thought I had Aaron."

"That was stupid, right? I mean, somebody had to take him. He'd have died out there, wouldn't he?" A fog was lifting, not because she'd left the Island. But because _he_ was gone. Claire knew this, and not just because she'd been told. _His_ presence in her head: gone. The constant buzzing, the insinuating voice, the sense of occupation: gone.

It was like being reborn.

She must have looked strange, because Kate said, "Claire, you OK?"

"Yeah. Really." Claire stood up to get a better view of the fly-specked room. "Kate, it just occurred to me. Do you think the walls might have ears?"

"I don't think they're listening in on us. I mean, look at this place." Kate gestured to the flimsy hollow-core door with its broken tab lock, the paper-thin wallboards with paint peeling off in sheets. She walked over to the big open window with its torn, dirty screen. "We could be out of here, gone in five seconds."

"Gone where? You saw it as we landed. It's an island." Claire joined Kate at the window, where chatting, friendly groups gathered on the long grass. They were probably talking about the strange plane which had just arrived, because they kept pointing towards the runway or skyward. A few women took food out of shopping bags and passed it around. Out on the lawn, Officer Nariki accepted a bottle of beer from a group of mothers with young children who jumped about on the shaggy grass, and he finished it off in a few gulps.

Kate rested her head against the screen. "Yeah, point. If this was LAX, they'd have SWAT teams surrounding us by now."

Claire continued to study the view. The palm trees here weren't like those on the Island. These looked not so much like trees as long upright feather dusters that hadn't been beaten clean in a long while. Out past the runway, what little land she could see was flat as a dinner plate, directly level with the calm blue ocean. A two-lane road ran smack-dab up alongside the ocean too, with a few cars parked practically at the surf-line. She said, "You want to talk about crazy, that would be Miles, thinking that he could nick one of those little planes."

"God, I just hope he doesn't do something stupid. What do you think they're-"

But Kate was interrupted by a soft knock on the door, as if they were guests in a hotel, and one of the staff wanted to get their attention. Neither woman said anything, so the door opened slowly, and an older woman's voice came through the opening. "Excuse me. I'm Auntie Merey."

In walked a tall, fat Kiribati woman of late middle age, her crinkly greying hair wrapped up in a tight bun. She wore a loose flowered cotton house-dress set off by a large gold crucifix around her neck. Auntie Merey looked around the room carefully, as if trying not to be rude, and she bore a composed, friendly expression. Setting down her duffel bag on the side table, she said, "They called me when your plane landed. Not that anybody could miss it. We only get the big planes twice a week, so you made a big stir."

Claire got what was happening before Kate did. "Are you a police-woman?"

That made Auntie Merey smile. "Hoo, no, I'm the midwife round here. The police, they call me if there's ladies to search. Chief Biribo and Officer Nariki, they're taking care of your men." She rustled around in her bag, pulling out a couple of fizzy drink bottles and a large package of Scotch fingers. "You two, you look hungry."

The lemon drink was almost as warm as the room, but the sugar rush went straight to Claire's head. She hadn't had anything like that in three years. It was as if all the sweet lemony fizz in the world were boiled down into that drink. She suddenly plopped herself on the wooden chair, knees buckling, light-headed. She'd had her last full meal three days before, when she and Hurley wolfed down stale crackers and tins of cold soup in the _Elizabeth's_ galley.

"Have some biscuits," Auntie Merey said. Claire took a handful and wolfed them down, unable to resist. She licked the crumbs from her fingers, and without speaking, Auntie Merey handed her a few more. Even stale and a bit damp, they were delicious. After a few minutes, Claire felt alert, better than she had in days, and best of all, calm.

Then Auntie Merey said in a conversational tone, "OK, who wants to go first?"

Kate stepped forward, in front of Claire. "I'll go. I know the drill."

Claire nodded, understanding. Long ago at the beach camp, Hurley had found out that Kate was a felon on the run. He managed to sit on that knowledge for a whole day before he told Claire and a couple of the other women, so when it hit the bush telegraph, everyone on the beach knew. Some rude, unpleasant school-teacher whose name Claire couldn't remember had said, "If the fat guy knows it, everybody knows it." Not that he had much right to talk about "fat guys" himself, though.

No one seemed to hold Kate's past against her, strangely enough, and in a few people's eyes it even raised their appreciation. "She doesn't take shit from anybody," Shannon once said to Claire as they sunned themselves on their preciously hoarded beach towels. Then Shannon had given a little sigh, as if Kate had some elusive quality which she, Shannon, would never possess.

"You both look like nice girls," Auntie Merey said, bringing Claire back to the present. "How about you just go down to your knickers and we'll call it done? The men don't need to know."

Claire couldn't miss the relief which crossed Kate's face. Kate quickly stripped to her underthings, the clean ones which she'd picked up on the plane. Auntie Merey said, "Excuse me, I'm going to start now," as she ran her finger first along Kate's bra straps and the elastic underneath, then along her panty lines. Then she looked with interest at Kate's scar, saying, "That healed up good."

Kate just nodded, noncommittal.

The examination took barely a minute, and as Kate dressed, Auntie Merey said, "So you're engaged, I hear. When's the wedding?"

"What?" said Kate, shocked.

"That's what the little fellow told us, the one who gave the officers some sass about being searched. Like we were going to steal his family jewels or something. And the tall fellow who you came in with, the one who sounds like a cowboy, he said he was hers," this with a nod to Claire.

"He said that? Really?" Kate sounded totally indignant now.

"Oh, it's a secret, then? I get that. Some of the girls 'round here, they don't want their parents to know right away, either. Don't worry, it's safe with me. I got more secrets in me than the ocean has fish." She laughed, and Claire could swear that she was enjoying Kate's discomfort. If Miles and Sawyer had said they were engaged to the two of them, there must have been a reason for it, though Kate obviously didn't see it that way.

Then it was Claire's turn. Flushing, she told the older woman, "I've, uh, kind of been going commando." Truth was, Claire hadn't had underthings for a very long time. _He_ had told her never to go back to the beach camp where she'd once lived, or anywhere on the coastline at all, for that matter. And even though the Barracks had been abandoned, Claire couldn't bring herself to scavenge there. The shabby yellow buildings held too many memories of events which could have played out but hadn't, harbored too many reminders of a life which could have come to fruition, but didn't.

Auntie Merey just nodded as if this was the most normal thing in the world. She took a large blue sheet like the ones used in doctors' offices, and draped it on Claire's shoulders like a mantle, holding it there while Claire undressed. If Auntie Merey noticed the dirt or the smell, she didn't react. Claire stood bare and mud-streaked before Auntie Merey, whose glance went directly to the large irregular brand-scar on Claire's upper left arm.

"Nasty burn," Auntie Merey remarked. Then her attention shifted downward. "Oh, honey, what happened there? That looks like it hurt." The gunshot wound on Claire's lower right thigh had long since healed, but the big stitch-marks still remained. Her first crude attempts to repair the wound had gone awry, leaving the skin pulled too tight on one side, too loose on the other, with a deep irregular dimple in the center.

Claire didn't say anything, but her heart started to race. She'd almost died from that wound, lying in her crude lean-to as she alternated between raging fever and half-conscious stupor. By all rights, she shouldn't have lived at all. However, one morning she just sat right up, still soaked with sweat but suddenly almost entirely better, the wound no longer red or even open. All _he__r friend_ said, though, was what a nuisance she had been for getting herself shot, and that getting her fixed up meant that now _he_ owed someone a favor.

Then Auntie Merey gently ran her fingers along the silver stretch-marks which laced Claire's breasts, flanks, and stomach. "So, you had a baby. What, three, four years ago?"

Claire lifted her eyes and stared, as if she just now remembered that Auntie Merey was a midwife. For an instant, Claire thought about lying. But Auntie Merey just looked at Claire with eyes full of compassion. You couldn't lie to someone who looked at you like that. So Claire swallowed hard and took the plunge. "Yeah, that's right. He's three." Behind her, Kate gasped.

"Your mama and papa, I guess they were pretty mad, huh? You not being married and all."

Tears collected in Claire's eyes, and no matter how she tried, she couldn't fight them back. All she could do was nod.

Auntie Merey went on in the same easy, conversational way. "So where's your little one now? 'Cause if you don't mind me saying, honey, you look like you been out in the bush for awhile."

Claire stopped, blank, because she hadn't the faintest idea where Aaron was. And up till this point, she hadn't had time to ask.

Kate quickly filled in the awkward silence. "He's with her mom."

"Guess Mama wasn't so mad after all. Bet you can't wait to get back to him," Auntie Merey said, but from the sideways glance she gave Claire, it was plain that she knew something was off.

When Claire didn't answer, the temperature of Auntie Merey's smile dropped a few degrees. She handed Claire her clothes, and fixed Kate with a cool stare. "When Nei Claire gets dressed here, her and me are gonna step outside for a minute, have a little chat. I trust you'll stay put and not give me any trouble."

Oh, crap, Claire thought as they stepped into the breezeway between the two buildings.

Auntie Merey positioned her big body right in front of the "VIP lounge" door and gave Claire another one of those warm glances of pure non-judgmental love and compassion.

There was no mistaking it that look. It was the perfect twin to the one Hurley had given her a few evenings ago, when they had sat together in that concrete bear cage on Hydra Island, waiting for Charles Widmore to decide what to do with them. Hurley had asked, "What happened to you, Claire?" When she told him her story, starting with, "I was kidnapped by _him,"_ Hurley's look had bathed her in sorrow and pity, just as Auntie Merey's did now.

"I want you to tell me the truth, honey," Auntie Merey said. "And if you lie, I'll know. 'Cause when you go to as many women in childbed as I have, you learn to sift through the lies. Mother Mary gives us all gifts, and mine's catching the truth along with the babies. You got some hard miles on you for a girl your age, and I'm gonna ask you this right out. Did somebody make you come here, like Nei Kate there, or maybe one of those men you came in with? 'Cause if you're not OK, you just say the word and I'll find a safe place for you. And then some heads are gonna roll, 'cause unlike some around here, I don't look the other way with that stuff."

Relief swept over Claire like a rising tide. "Oh, no. No way. Kate, Kate helped me." The simplest explanation was the best, and she gave it. "There was a guy in the bush I was living with, and he was a jerk. Kate helped me get away from him."

"And your child?"

"His dad left me flat a long time ago, wouldn't marry me." Claire had blurted out the two biggest unspoken secrets of her adult life, and now there was no calling them back.

Auntie Merey must have felt the sincerity, for it wasn't until the older woman's body relaxed that Claire saw how tense she had been. Claire could readily believe that if it were necessary, Auntie Merey would have torn somebody's head off. Now Auntie Merey's smile came back, warm and comforting. "OK, honey. I just had to ask."

As Auntie Merey turned to open the door, Claire said a two-second prayer that Kate would still be there, and not have climbed out through the window or something. Fortunately, there she sat on the couch under the thumping fan, munching a biscuit and looking cool as you please despite the room's sweltering humidity.

"Everything all right?" Kate asked, after Auntie Merey had left.

"She wanted to know if you were holding me for sex trafficking."

"Oh my God, she said that?"

"Not in so many words. But Kate, you've got to tell me, and I promise I won't get mad. That bit about my mum, that can't be true. Who's Aaron really with now?"

"I told you, your mom."

An angry protest forced its way up through Claire's throat, but she managed to throttle it half-way. She'd already accused Kate of lying once, and look how that had turned out. "Kate, please. Mum's been in a nursing home in Sydney for years."

"I saw her in LA almost two years ago, and then again last month. I left Aaron with her."

Claire flopped down on the other end of the couch, reeling. It was like something from a dream: Mum coming back to life, and not only alive, but well enough to travel, to take care of Aaron. For the last time, Claire wondered if she'd finally gone round the bend after all. "But how can that be? She was in a coma from a traffic accident. I should know, I drove right into the truck that put her there."

"You never told me that." Kate sounded a bit affronted.

"There was a lot you didn't tell me about yourself, either."

"Yeah, well- Look, Claire, she seemed fine. Great, in fact. She even yelled at Jack."

"That sounds like Mum." Then the vast overwhelming bigness hit Claire with the force of the truck which had almost annihilated Carole Littleton, and she began to cry, face in hands. It was too much, too soon, and soon she was racked by sobs. "She never even knew I had the baby."

"She sure found out." Kate patted Claire's shoulder, took her hands, and soon the two of them were crying together.

They didn't even hear the door open, or see Auntie Merey come in the room one more time. It wasn't until she stood right by them and rested her hands on each one's shoulder that they even noticed she was there.

"You two were making such a racket, you can hear it outside." Auntie Merey's tone implied that they were attracting attention, and maybe they didn't want to do that.

"Sorry," Claire said through sniffles. "My friend here just gave me some family news."

"These are happy tears, really," Kate added.

"Listen, you two. All I know is, I told Chief Biribo that you checked out just fine, that you were good girls and weren't gonna cause any trouble. Don't make me a liar now. You got to wipe your faces and pull yourself together, 'cause now they're gonna take you someplace to stay, till the Americans come to get you."

As the thin wooden door swung shut behind her, still unlocked, Claire said, "I'm glad we talked to her. But Richard's going to kill us."

"Don't worry," Kate said. "I can handle Richard."

(_continued_)


	5. Vigil at the Beach

**Chapter 5: Vigil at the Beach**

**(A/N: _Thanks_, Mittelosian,_ for finding an editing error, now fixed_.)**

Hugo arrived at the old beach camp on the Island's southern shore, where the middle-section survivors of Oceanic 815 flight had made their home so many years before. Vincent had padded behind him most of the way, but then veered off into the jungle. He'd show up again, though. He always did.

Exhausted, Hugo stumbled around, looking for a place to lay Jack's body. Late afternoon sun flooded the camp, and there was almost no breeze.

The food tent. That's where Jack could go. The long slab table had been lashed together out of the Oceanic 815's galley sections, then propped up on logs. Once it had held cans of Dharma food, as well as anything the survivors scavenged. Under Rose's watchful eye, everyone helped themselves, and most times, nobody took more than they needed. Once that table had held Jack in life, too, when Bernard and Juliet had stretched a tarp over the long table, and taken out Jack's inflamed appendix.

Hugo was glad he'd missed that part. Even hearing about it from Kate was bad enough.

It wasn't a tent any longer, though. The nylon canopy which had served as a roof and sun-shade had blown off, and now lay crumpled in a heap a dozen feet away. Hugo swept leaves and twigs off the table with one hand, balancing Jack with the other, then laid Jack's body down.

Hugo surveyed the camp site. Most of the tarps had come loose and blown onto the ground, where they lay caked with mud and coated with dried leaves, so Hugo went to look for a clean one.

Sayid's shelter was in the best shape. Of all of them in the beach camp, it was also the simplest in construction, made of nothing but thick bamboo poles lashed together, its tarp tied on with expert knots.

Sayid wouldn't need this shelter any more, would he? Hugo had cried hard for Sayid once already, but tears had a way of sneaking around the corner and pouncing on you when you least expected it. He blinked back a few stray ones, then struggled with Sayid's knots, which even after these years had still kept their taut hold on the shelter's roof. Sayid had sloped it just the right way, too, so that water ran off into a catch-basin, but not so steep that the rain would blow in.

Hugo hesitated, almost not wanting to dismantle something so elegant, so beautifully put together. Then he found the knot's secret, and it unraveled easily. Soon the tarp was down, and Jack was covered.

On a stretch of beach which got lonelier by the minute as the sun lowered in the southwestern sky, Hugo wanted Jack to have some lights. He didn't expect Ben and the others to arrive for some time, maybe not till tomorrow morning. But leaving a body overnight in the dark, no way. Hugo had already built a roaring fire which cheered as well as warmed him, but it wasn't the same. It wasn't enough.

There might not have been any candles on the beach, but there were plenty of torches, stout sticks wrapped in strips of cloth. Hugo lit two of them and stuck each one in the sand at opposite ends of the table where Jack's body rested, one at his head, one at his feet.

Hugo left Jack, then, and walked down to the sea-side. The sunset blazed up in swirls of pink and violet, like one of those paintings by that crazy Dutch guy somebody wrote a song about, the one you heard all the time on the "golden oldies" stations. In half an hour it would be dark. If he wanted any supper, he'd have to make tracks.

Vincent ambled up, licking his chops from whatever meal he'd found. A little trace of blood still streaked his muzzle.

"Glad you got your dinner, buddy," Hugo said. "Looks like I'm going to have to hunt mine." This didn't worry him, not really, but the sun went down fast on the Island, and he didn't want to be poking around in the surf after dark.

In the old days on the beach, when Jin was first learning English, Hugo had persuaded Jin to teach him some tricks of the fishing trade, and once Hugo had gotten the hang of it, he rarely went hungry. But it took a spear or tackle, poles or nets, and while in the past the beach camp had been orderly and organized, it wasn't anymore. Three years of neglect had left most of the shelters in ruin, and wind had even carried some of them off.

Maybe Jin had some tackle in the tent where he and Sun slept. Hugo poked his head in, even though it felt wrong. This was their house, after all, even if neither of them were alive to claim it.

Hugo gave a deep sigh. Both of them had been separated by years, by time travel, even. And within a day of finding each other, they died. Poor little Ji Yeon, too, who had to be what, three now? But he could only envision her the way she was when he saw her last, a tiny, cooing pink bundle. Now she was going to grow up without her parents.

He made the sign of the cross before rummaging through Sun and Jin's things, but found no fish-hooks or tackle.

There was something else, though, sitting on the small metal crate which served as a night-stand. It looked like a make-up case, one of those brightly colored vinyl bags women used for their cosmetics. But instead of lipstick and tubes of color, this one was full of seeds.

Hugo rummaged through the brightly-colored packages one by one, and squinted to read their labels in the fading light. No luck, though, as the labels were in Korean, even though it was clear by the pictures what they were: a few different kinds of squash, including bitter melon. Kale, green onions, hot and sweet peppers. Some sweet corn. Calabashes, the kinds of gourds you could dry out and use as containers. A couple kinds of cantaloupes.

Some of the packages were neatly cut open and then tightly folded over, although from the feel of it, there were lots of seeds left. Other packets were still sealed.

Why would Sun have brought seeds with her, if she and Jin were going back to Ji Yeon and their life in Seoul?

It wasn't until he put the packets back in their vinyl bag and zipped it shut that the answer came to him. These seeds weren't for her and Jin. They were for everyone else, for all of them who were going to stay.

But seeds weren't vegetables, and there was still dinner to worry about. Maybe he could score some eggs up on the rockier southwestern shore. Claire had been the best egg hunter of them all, because she watched the birds so carefully, and found their hidden nests. Once she joked about how it was like Easter-egg hunting, even though gull eggs were brown or light green, covered with speckles.

Hugo walked down to the sea-strand, but the massive red ball of the sun almost touched the horizon. This told him that he wouldn't have time to walk up the southwest shore, find eggs, then get back before dark. There was one other possibility, though.

Land crabs came out when the sun went down. Hugo knew just where they liked to hang out, too, at the coconut grove just west of the beach camp. They gathered around the bases of the palms and clambered over the coconuts, piercing them with their sharp claws to get to the meat inside.

No one at the beach camp had dared to catch these crabs, not after one of the survivors had lost a finger to one. The man's hand had healed within a few days, but no one else had wanted to repeat the experiment. The land crabs continued their small lives unmolested, climbing trees or eating any dead fish or crab fragments left by the gulls.

There they were this evening, about twenty of them. Land crabs didn't have their own shells, but instead hitch-hiked in the shells which other sea animals left behind. When a crab grew too big for one, it crawled out and looked for another. It was kind of gross when they did that. They looked squirmy and naked as they crept along the sand, until they slid inside their bigger new home.

The really big ones, larger than Hugo's two hands put together, were too tough-bodied to need shells. However, they were the ones whose claws could take off a finger or a toe. Hugo took a long, straight piece of driftwood, thinking to roll out some coconuts from under the trees. If they were already broken by the crabs, even better.

He had almost reached the palm grove where the crabs were feasting, when he let the stick fall to his side. The smaller crabs had all stopped what they were doing, and started to crawl towards him.

Hugo took a few steps backwards. "Oh, man, it's the freaking attack of the Crab People."

The crabs didn't move very quickly, and Hugo knew he could easily outrun them. So for a few seconds he stood in horrified fascination as they slowly approached. The big old ones ignored both Hugo and the smaller crabs, content to feast on coconuts. But the smaller ones moved forward towards him in a pack. Slow but relentless, they raised their claws.

"Holy crap," Hugo said. This wasn't funny anymore. In fact, it was downright scary. He backed up more, and just as he was about to turn and run, the crabs stopped.

Since the land crabs had stopped their advance, Hugo stopped too. Then, like soldiers on parade ordered to stand at ease, all together the land crabs slipped out of their shells. They dragged their long soft bodies across the sand and lay down before Hugo, their claws limp and no longer threatening.

Offering themselves up.

It was clear what the little creatures intended. Hugo decided to take the risk, steeled himself, then picked one up. He braced himself for the nip which never came. The crab lay limp in his palm, a good quarter-pound of crab meat for the picking. Its beady black eyes on their short stalks stared back at Hugo. It had two claws, a large one for gripping, and a smaller one for putting food into its mouth. The big claw was the one you had to fear. The little claw quivered, as did the feelers around its mouth. Otherwise it was still.

He couldn't do it. It was one thing to dig crabs out of the sand, or to spear a fish. In that case the animal had a chance to get away. You felt that it was a fair contest, even if it was one which Hugo usually won. But this offering he didn't understand. It didn't seem right. There were other things he could eat.

"Go back to your coconuts, little guy," Hugo said as he set the crab down on the sand. As the rest of them crawled back into their shells, he jogged on ahead of them and grabbed an armful of coconuts. The big crabs kept chewing and ignored him.

Hugo's hands shook as he dumped the coconuts by the fireside. He foraged around the litter at the base of the food tent shelves until he found a real prize, a can of Dharma Spam. As the Spam heated in its can, he stared into the flames, wondering what the hell had just happened there. It was like one of those dreams where you show up in a class you haven't been to in weeks, then a test gets dumped on your desk. You can't even read it, because it's a dream, but it wouldn't matter, because you haven't studied for it anyway.

He stirred chunks of Spam into jellied coconut, which tasted surprisingly good. Then he gave Vincent the can, and as the dog licked it clean, Hugo wondered what else he could do, and how he would find that out.

Twilight turned to deep star-streaked night. Hugo stuck his head into one shelter after another, looking for bedding. These spaces were once as private as bedrooms, but unlike bedrooms they did nothing to conceal the sounds inside. A fight, a conversation, love-making: all were as public to anyone passing by as if they were happening right out there on the beach.

You learned to look away, to close your ears.

Now whatever was left was his for the taking. His own shelter had collapsed, but his suitcase from three years ago still had clothes in it, a welcome relief from his wet and stinking ones. He felt weirdly exposed as he changed, even though there was no one on the beach to watch him.

In Sawyer's tent, someone had neatly stacked the books and magazines, then covered the whole pile with a tarp to protect it. Hugo would bet anything that Ben might like to go through those when he got here.

His eye caught a men's magazine, lying on the ground as if someone had carelessly tossed it there. Between his trembling hand and the torchlight's flicker, the half-naked girl on the cover seemed to writhe and arch her back, inviting. Desire slid up the insides of his thighs like a warm, swift caress. He dropped the magazine and backed out, clutching a blue airline blanket.

As Hugo retreated, he almost crashed into into the broken piece of fuselage which had once served as Claire's eastern wall. He swerved, stepping on the broken pieces of Aaron's old cradle, pulverizing them. From the splintered mess he took the baby blanket, then shook it clean.

He clutched the soft little bundle to his chest for a moment, remembering. Two nights ago, Charles Widmore had locked them in a cage on Hydra Island. While Sun and Jin held each other and talked in low, urgent voices, Kate, Sawyer, and Frank explored the cage, looking for a way out. Claire, though, had sidled up to him and slid her rough, calloused hand into his.

Kate and Sawyer had scrutinized Hugo and Claire as the two of them talked, until Hugo gave Sawyer the small nod which showed that everything was cool. Claire wasn't going to try anything, not anymore.

Afterwards, she'd leaned her head against his shoulder, rubbed her face back and forth against it a few times like a sleepy cat. She dozed like a small animal, but jerked wide awake when Widmore's guards tromped by, sticks crackling under their boots, then closed her eyes once more.

Hugo had said very little about himself. He'd thought they'd all be heading home together, and that there'd be plenty of time. But there never was, it seemed.

After Jack broke them out of the cage, after Smokey tossed Widmore's men around toys wrecked by a toddler's tantrum, they all headed for the plane that was supposed to take them off the Island. She'd hung back with him on the trail, sending him small smiles, tokens of hope that Sawyer was wrong, that a lot of "the old Claire" was still there.

In the first light of morning, Sayid had surprised their group by popping out of the jungle. As soon as Sayid showed up, Claire had pushed on ahead of Hugo. Already tired from the frantic march, already bringing up the rear, Hugo struggled to keep pace with the two of them. Then when Claire took Sayid's hand in hers, Hugo fell back, telling himself that he was an idiot.

Of course. What had he been thinking? Even when Hugo had first laid eyes on her in Locke's camp, she and Sayid had stood pressed together, both of them watching him with silent, emotionless faces from the shadows just outside the camp-fire's reach.

It hurt like a hard slap.

Sayid and Claire moved together like two wild cats on the hunt, panther and mountain lion in unison. But Hugo also saw that Claire was the one who took Sayid's hand, not the other way around, and that even as Claire clung to him, Sayid's eyes were cold and blank, and he didn't look down at her.

Now, at least, Claire was alive and on the wing. But what if he could stretch his mind out somehow across the sea, across the continents, and stick thoughts of him into her heart?

He sprang to his feet, kicking sand into the camp-fire, his own heart pounding. Ben thought there were some rules Hugo could change. Hugo didn't pretend to know Jacob's rules. Even the "people can't leave the Island" one had more holes than the rusted undercarriage of Hugo's old Ford Pinto. Hugo kind of suspected that Jacob had made up a lot of it as he went along.

But what if you could change all the rules, all at once?

Hugo couldn't remain still a moment longer. He paced the beach camp, swinging his torch from side to side with jerky, ragged motions as he paced.

Sometimes when you didn't know where you were going, all you could do was put down one foot, then another. Even when he was a kid, back before he'd gotten so fat, he identified more with the tortoise than the hare in that old story. This wasn't any different. For example, whatever Jacob could do, whatever Jack could, whatever he himself might do if he could just figure it out, the earth still went around the sun. Time still passed, people got old, shit happened, people died.

Or did they? If Jacob and Richard Alpert were any indicators, Hugo wasn't going to. Not for a very long time, anyway.

After Sayid had gotten shot by the Dharma guys in the 1970s, everybody thought Sayid was going to die. His inert weight rested in Hugo's arms as his life's blood soaked first their clothes, before dripping onto the ground. Then Sawyer had carried Juliet's mangled body out of the Swan Hatch debris while Hugo cradled Sayid, tearing Hugo between the needs of the living and the already-gone.

All Hugo could do was to pour prayers on both of them. But he knew that oftentimes the answer was _No_.

Then, after Sayid had supposedly been drowned in the pool at that temple of doom, he'd coughed, sputtered, and rolled over. Hugo had rushed to him and gathered him once again in his arms. Sayid wasn't cool to the touch anymore, but warm. A pulse pounded at his temple, and his eyes darted about in confusion.

It just showed you that there was always a little room for hope. Each one of Sayid's rapid, panicked breaths sounded like an answered prayer. But Kate and Sawyer huddled in a narrow, sun-filled alcove, the light behind them so strong that it left only their outlines. Hugo didn't need to see Sawyer's face to know this wasn't the answer Sawyer wanted, not while Juliet lay miles away under a sandy mound.

Now there wasn't even anything left of Sayid. Or if there was, the fishes were making short work of it.

Same with Jin's body, and Sun's, by now drifted to the sandy bottom, with all the small bottom-creatures cleaning their bones, soon to be crystallized with sheets of glittering coral. Hugo couldn't help grieving more for Sun than Jin, if only because Hugo had spent a lot of time staring at her body, thinking about her. Then he had seen their child, held her little soft cooing form in his arms while Jin hadn't. Suddenly that felt like an almost unbearable intimacy, with all the weight of adultery despite its innocence.

Hugo's thoughts tumbled now like an avalanche. He found himself standing before Jack's covered body.

What if he could reach out into the ocean itself, somehow find Sayid's exploded fragments, and reassemble them? He'd already promised Ben something like the job of prime minister. But Hugo could use a general, too, one who was smart, who knew how tech worked, who could sneak like a ninja and make war plans besides. It was a big jungle. There could still be enemies. He'd seen Sayid in action, and it was fearsome. You might argue that was part of protecting the Island too, part of defending it, keeping it safe.

And if Hugo could do that (_not saying he could, but just maybe, what if_), how hard would it be to pull Sun and Jin out of the sunken submarine, put them together, too? Then they could go home to their little girl and their life in Seoul.

What if Sawyer could have Juliet back, blood wiped away, life in her eyes? What a surprise that would be for Sawyer, if Juliet went back home with Desmond, Sun, and Jin.

Then, what if (_no, don't think it, don't even go there, it's not possible_) all those mounds of sandy dirt could be shoveled off of all those graves. It would be like watching a burial on a VHS tape, played in reverse.

What if he could reach out his hand and bring Jack back?

Hugo unpeeled the tarp to reveal Jack's face. About Jack's body there still hovered that faint sweetness that wasn't decay, but something unworldly, and Jack's face held the gentle hint of a smile. Hugo knew how bodies got when they were laid out. He'd seen it enough back home, with his Grandma Titi, his old uncle. They didn't smile like Jack did, no way. After awhile, dead people's faces twisted into a grin, like they were laughing at some sick joke only they could understand.

Jack didn't look like that, though. Hugo had seen Jack in just about every state. Relaxed and competitive on the golf course. Puckish, when he thought he was being clever. Tender, when he looked at Kate, but like he was trying to fight the tenderness, too. Enraged and screaming with fury, when Jacob didn't appear the Lighthouse when Jack was expecting him.

Never, though, had Hugo seen this expression before. Jack was almost beautiful, because his features were so soft and relaxed. He looked as if he were listening to delightful music.

Best of all, Jack looked _there, _like he wasn't completely checked out yet_._ After Jacob had died, he'd hung around to give Hugo some much-needed direction. Dead Jacob had even been able to make Jack the protector. Maybe there was enough of Jack still around to-

Could he? And if he could, would he do it?

If Hugo did this thing, it would be for one reason alone. He wouldn't do it for himself. He'd do it to call Jack on his promise to let Hugo "give it back." Then, like that old giant dude who carried the whole world on his shoulders, Jack could pick up the weight of the Island once more, and thus lift it off Hugo.

Wasn't it always supposed to have been Jack? That's what Sayid had said on the sub, before running to the far end, saving them all. Even Kate couldn't drag Jack away from that burden. Only getting stabbed by the smoke monster could do that.

There was a reason, though, all the old stories told you one thing clear as day. Dead was dead. Because no one person, not even the Island's protector, could know how all the stories were supposed to end, not in the long run. It was too much for one person, to decide like that. The temptations were too great.

Stillness settled over Hugo. Three years ago Jack had crashed on this shore, left it once, then returned. Now he was going to be laid to rest here. There was nothing to decide. Somehow, paradoxically, that seemed to lighten Hugo's load just a bit.

Hugo covered Jack's face, only now realizing how exhausted he was. In front of the fire, he wadded Aaron's blanket into a pillow, then wrapped himself in the airline blanket. Vincent nestled down at Hugo's side, thumping his tail, and Hugo fell asleep almost at once.

* * *

><p>In the hollow of the night he had a dream. He walked down to the sea-strand under a huge moon whose crooked face seemed to say, <em>You <em>_ain't seen nothin' __yet_. The soft sea breeze ruffled his hair, which covered his shoulders in a great brown mane.

Out to sea, something stirred in the waves.

Suddenly the waters split aside, and from beneath them a face pushed up. It gleamed in the moonlight like lustrous blue metal, its huge round eyes white all around except for tiny dark dots deep inside. Each eye was easily the size of the wheels on a tractor-trailer truck. The head bore Mr. Spock pointed ears and a goatee which snaked its way across its wide jaw, while its face twisted out wild and crazy, like it was being stretched.

Its huge blue body didn't rise out of the ocean so much as ooze out of it. The swollen form floated above the surf for an instant, then slowly floated towards him. Its body ended not in legs, but in a snakelike tail which whipped back and forth, churning the waves to a froth.

Weirdly enough, Hugo didn't feel any fear. "Hey, genie."

The huge blue genie stuck his face right up to Hugo's, fixing him with a wicked grin. Then the genie breathed out something with a tiny puff, the way a child spits out a seed from a piece of a fruit. The small, shiny thing dropped at Hugo's feet, glimmering in the moonlight as Hugo bent over to pick it up.

It was a small white stone a little bigger than walnut, perfectly sized to fit in the curved palm of his hand. The moon was almost as bright as day now, but its light was cool, not golden like the sun, yet still bright enough to read by. Inscribed upon the small white stone was a name.

Normally Hugo couldn't read in dreams. Words on a page just looked like random squiggles. Not this time, though. Written on the stone was his name. Not Hugo Emiliano Salazar Reyes, the name he'd been given at birth by his mother and father. Even so, the strange word written on the stone was his true name.

The genie had twisted himself into a pretzel shape. "You're the boss, the king, the shah. Just don't forget the three rules of the lamp. And hide that rock, boy. Keep it good and safe."

There was no way Hugo could argue with a twenty-foot high floating genie, so he just gave a nod.

The genie didn't exactly disappear, but more like melted into the foaming water. Then he was gone.

* * *

><p>When Hugo woke up, he didn't open his eyes at first, because the sense of his dream was so strong, and he wanted to hold onto it as long as he could. At first he couldn't remember what the rules of the lamp were, but then it came to him.<p>

The genie from _Aladdin _had been ready to give Aladdin anything he wanted. Not strictly anything, though, because there were rules, things Aladdin could and couldn't do with the power of the lamp.

_Y__ou can't wish yourself more wishes_.

_You can't make anybody fall in love with you._

_You can't bring anybody back from the dead_.

Even if Hugo could do those things, none of them were a good idea. Not that he was about to test them, anyway.

Hugo peeked outside his cocoon of blankets, just as Vincent loped over and shoved his face into Hugo's, getting in a few licks. The dog's breath was gamey, and Hugo winced. "Ugh, gross. Whatever you had for breakfast, I don't want any." Vincent didn't care if his meat was fresh or not. He even seemed to prefer it a little ripe. Hugo lifted his hand to give the dog a pat, and as he did, something fell from his palm into the sand.

Vincent backed away and started to bark, the kind of noise a dog makes when he thinks it is critically important that you listen to him.

Hugo stared at the plain white stone there on the sand. Unlike the one in his dream, though, this one didn't have any weird letters written on it. Not that he could remember what those letters said, anyway. Keep it safe, though. That's what his dream had said.

Softly Hugo muttered to himself, "Dude."

He picked it up, hoping no one was around to see, then slid it into his cargo pocket as quickly as he could.

Just then, voices called out to him from across the beach. "Hurley!" "Hugo!"

Rose and Bernard approached from the direction of the coconut grove, and between them they carried a thick stick on which were strung a dozen or so reddish-brown fish. Ben was adding branches to the fire, while Desmond stuffed dried leaves into the teapot hanging over it.

Hugo staggered to his feet. From the look of the sun, it was mid-morning.

Rose handed the fish to Bernard, and gave Hugo a warm hug. "Hey, sleepyhead. We thought you were going to stay rolled up there all day."

(_continued_)


	6. Jack is Laid to Rest

**Chapter 6: Jack is Laid to Rest**

Three of Bernard's big red fish served as breakfast for them all, and Bernard hung up the rest on a wooden frame, to dry in the sun. When he was done, he said what was on all their minds. "Time to get to it, I guess."

"There's a grave already dug," Ben offered.

Hugo looked over in surprise. "What? Where?"

"Over at your cemetery. It was supposed to be for me, but Jack can have it. Ilana made me dig it, because I killed Jacob."

"You don't have to act so nonchalant about it," said Rose.

Desmond said, "Who's Ilana? And where is she now?"

"Dead," Hugo said. "She was one of Jacob's ninja fighters. She was supposed to protect us, but she dropped some bad dynamite and got blown up instead."

"Sounds like she believed in steps of the courthouse justice," said Rose.

"Which is no justice at all," Bernard finished.

Hugo thought that was probably true on both counts. "Yeah, rest in peace, Ilana."

The torches at the head and foot of the table which served as Jack's bier still burned, from sundown of the night before. Hugo decided not to say anything about it.

Rose folded down the tarp with slow reverence, then took a deep breath and smiled. "He looks so peaceful. And Desmond, you were right, it's like the Botanical Garden. But we can't bury him all covered in dirt and blood, his clothes torn to pieces."

She covered Jack back up, then turned to Ben. "Nobody's going to be using all the stuff around here. Go look through some of those suitcases. It doesn't have to be fancy, just clean and presentable."

As she tied a square of cloth around her waist for an apron, she said to Desmond and Bernard, "That big galvanized can over there, fill it with water and set it to heating on the fire. Poor Jack, he won't care if the water's warm or not, but it'll help clean him off. Then we'll get him fixed up good and proper."

"Rose?" Hugo said in a small voice. "I'm really glad you came."

"Oh, honey, don't even think about it. On the way down here, Ben told us about that 'Protector' business. It doesn't make much sense to me, but I believe in you. I also believe that you have a cross laid on your back so big you don't even know it's there yet."

Hot water alone wasn't going to do it for Jack, though. Hugo said, "Be right back. I got an idea about what might make this easier."

He headed off to the farthest northwest corner of the beach camp, his footsteps muffled by a thick mat of fallen leaves. A cluster of tents had once stood here under the dappled shade, although most of the tent poles had fallen down, the tarps and contents scavenged. However, a few of the shelters ringed a fire-pit stood mostly intact.

In the early days after the Oceanic 815 crash, a group of survivors had set up their shelters way back here, away from the sun and activity of the beach. Seven or eight women had lived here, along with three or four men. Shannon used to hang with them, and Claire too for awhile. Hugo had checked them against the Oceanic 815 manifest, but that was three years ago, and a lot had happened since. So their names eluded him at first.

He tried to remember their faces. The older, heavy-set blonde woman whose hair was going gray, was that Karen? No, Kathy. She had a close friend who shared her shelter, a dark-brown-skinned woman with thick curly black hair, who used to give Hugo roasted octopus whenever she caught it. That would be Shana. The cute Indonesian chick with long black hair was Sirrah, with her Chinese boyfriend Chen. A movie-star gorgeous couple with accents kind of like Sawyer's were Faith and Craig. A shy blonde woman in her late thirties, Meredith maybe. And a few others besides.

The Girl Scout Camp. That's what Sawyer called them, all yapping and hollering like a bunch of goddamn Girl Scouts. They'd always been nice to Hugo, though, and he never understood why Sawyer didn't like them.

He rummaged in the largest Girl Scout tent that was still standing. That must have been Kathy and Shana's, because those two used to make soap from fire-ash, boar fat, and mashed-up plants which they found in the jungle. They traded it for scissors, razor blades, all the stuff Sawyer used to hoard. In the tent, Hugo found some of the coconut shells which the women used to hold the soap they made.

Then, just Hugo's luck, he hit upon a great find, a shell almost full of the gray sticky stuff. It wasn't even moldy or anything, but soft and fragrant with a gingery, coconut smell. He picked the shell up as carefully as if it were a chalice. It still seemed weird to Hugo to take stuff out of people's tents, although Kathy probably wouldn't mind him helping himself to the soap. She and her friends were long gone by now, anyway.

Given how crazy things had gotten later, Hugo couldn't exactly blame them. For the Girl Scout Camp people had disappeared, poof, just like that.

* * *

><p>The morning after Libby's funeral, Hugo had joined Michael, Jack, Kate, and Sawyer on a long trek all the way across the Island. Hugo had returned alone, without Walt, without anybody, because the Others had taken them all.<p>

When Hugo got back to the beach camp, everything was a mess. Locke was positioning himself as the new big kahuna. Nikki and Paolo had turned Jack's tent into a love shack. Claire and Charlie were back together again. So it wasn't until the next day that Hugo even noticed that the Girl Scouts were gone.

At first, in a moment of panic, Hugo thought they'd been captured by the Others, like Jack and everybody. But nobody acted panicked, not even the few of the Girl Scouts' friends who'd been left behind.

They'd taken over the Girl Scout tents. Hugo approached a little blonde woman named Sylvie, who always wore a fleece hat with the corners twisted into mouse ears. Sylvie sat with her friend Janice, an older woman with dyed red hair that was growing out, which gave her a big black stripe down the top of her head. Next to them, Doug whittled fish-hooks out of boar bones, while Jerome was wrapping a bandage around his foot.

Hugo asked where Kathy and her friends had gone. Sylvie and Janice, normally so open and friendly to Hugo, just sat there and didn't answer. Jerome kept wrapping while Doug kept carving, eyes fixed on the knife in his hand, not wanting to look at Hugo.

Finally Jerome spoke up.

Kathy and everybody had left the next night after Libby's funeral. "The four of us were gonna go, too. But I'd sprained my foot. Or broke it."

Sylvie said, "With no x-ray, Jack couldn't tell. Not that it mattered, 'cause we wouldn't leave Jerome anyway."

Janice nodded, and Doug said, "We don't leave people behind."

Hugo's face fell. He'd been waiting for someone to blame him for Jack and everybody not coming back.

All at once, though, Janice said, "Not you, Hurley. Nobody holds you responsible. No one with any brains, anyway."

At the time, it was the kindest thing anyone could say to him. The beach camp already seemed to have healed itself seamlessly, not missing Jack and Kate all that much, despite Locke trying to rile them up with rousing speeches. People politely nodded, then went on with their lives: fishing, trapping, golfing, tending their fires, walking hand in hand on the beach, necking at night in front of their tents, coupling up.

Still, Hugo itched with curiosity. He tried to sound casual, but it didn't come off that way. "So, um, where'd they go?"

Finally, Doug remarked in a gentle tone, "Funny you're so curious now, man. We been planning this for weeks. How'd you miss it?"

It was true. Hugo had been kind of preoccupied in the three weeks since the tail section survivors had joined them on the beach. In fact, he'd been pretty much lost in his own private Idaho, and hadn't been paying attention to much around him at all.

Sylvie and the rest just went back to their work around the campfire, signaling to Hugo that the conversation was over, leaving him to wonder.

The subject never came up again. Later, Doug and Jerome, Janice and Sylvie took their stand with Claire and Hugo, as they all followed Locke up to the Barracks. When the Barracks were attacked by Keamy's men, Sawyer told Hugo how Doug had taken a full shot to the chest, spraying blood and bits of his lungs all over Sawyer. But Hugo hadn't seen the other three again. Maybe they'd gotten shot too. Or maybe they'd disappeared into the jungle and found the rest of the Girl Scouts, somewhere out there in the dark.

* * *

><p>By the time Hugo got back to Jack's body, the wash-water was hot. Bernard had retrieved the food tent canopy and was arranging it above the table as a kind of curtain.<p>

"Look, Rose, I got soap," Hugo said.

Rose just smiled as she and Hugo undressed Jack on the table. His limbs were supple, and the fresh rosy scent filled the area around him. He still looked peacefully asleep.

"It humbles you, doesn't it?" Rose said as they made a thick lather. They sponged away the dirt and blood, letting the soapy water fall through the table cracks to the sand below. With much of the dark-brown coating washed off, Jack looked pale and vulnerable. Never had Hugo seen anything so pathetic, so defenseless. Blood from Jack's wound had run down his side into his groin, filling all the spaces, and down his thighs as well.

Rose saw Hugo hesitate. "You want me to do that, honey?"

"Nah, Rose, it's OK."

"You don't have to be shy. I laid out my daddy, as well as my great-aunt Oleatha. Joseph and Nicodemus did it for our Lord. It's respectful work we do."

Jack's legs parted easily, and soon all the dried, clotted blood was washed into the sand to merge with the rest of the elements, as Jack himself eventually would.

As Rose and Hugo patted Jack's body dry, late morning sunlight filtered through the yellow and orange nylon canopy to give his skin a golden glow. Then Bernard brought in a few clothes, slacks and a blue button-down shirt.

Before Rose could dress Jack, Bernard insisted on running skilled fingers over Jack's torso, touching the deep stab wound on his side. "This must have been what did him in."

The wound had puckered closed, but Bernard pried the skin apart. As he separated the flaps, an especially strong floral smell filled the tent. "Acetone," Bernard remarked, although no one had asked. "Product of decomposition. Oh, take a look here," though neither Rose nor Hugo wanted to. "It's one entry point, but the knife was really twisted around. As if whoever did it wanted to inflict the maximum amount of damage."

Rose had enough. "OK, you're done, Bernard." To Hugo she said, "The LA County coroner asked him to help with one case that had no dental records. Now he thinks he's Columbo."

As Rose dressed Jack, Desmond and Ben stuck their heads into the tent. Rose said, "Might as well take down this canopy. He's dressed."

Hugo finished buttoning the shirt, and straightened Jack's collar. "You know, Bernard, I thought he'd be, well, stiffer."

Bernard leaned in closer to Jack's body, clearly glad to be asked. "Rigor mortis only lasts about eight hours. He died early yesterday, so this is normal."

"Hurley, don't encourage him," said Rose.

"Uh, Bernard, he never got stiff at all."

"That's not possible. It's a chemical reaction inside the muscles."

"Bernard, I'm not kidding you. I was with him. There wasn't enough time."

Bernard gave Ben a long look, as if asking for confirmation. "Ben?"

From the reluctant tone in his voice, Ben clearly didn't want to get drawn into this. "There was that huge storm, and several earthquakes. Desmond was unconscious for a lot of it. Hugo and I got separated before we found Jack's body. So I don't think any of us really knows how long it was between when Jack actually died, and when we found him."

Rose just stood there, arms folded, watching.

Hugo didn't get angry often, but when he did, it was like a large slow column of lava moving up the throat of a volcano. Usually he had time to short-circuit it, but once the lava reached the boiling point, out it would spew. Dr. Curtis at the Santa Rosa mental hospital had taught him to imagine little channels of lava spreading off on all sides of the volcano, letting off steam and pressure along the way.

Bernard adopted that professional tone which Hugo recognized well, as it usually came with offers of tranquilizers. "Hurley, I think I understand what you're trying to say. I agree that what we're seeing here isn't quite... usual, even though that floral smell can be explained by bacterial fermentation. Although despite this heat, there's no sign of decay. And the wounds on his side and neck seem to be closing, even more so than what we'd expect in twenty-four to thirty-six hours post-mortem-"

Red-faced, Hugo breathed deeply, consciously relaxing his fists. "This isn't a specimen. This is Jack. This is Jack you're talking about. And it's Hugo, not Hurley."

Bernard went on in the same saccharine voice. "What I'm trying to say, Hugo, is that Jack's dead."

Hugo sighed, more exasperated than angry now. "I know he's dead. I'm not crazy." Then he burst into laughter at the absurdity of it all. In the past two days he'd been made an almost godlike being and told to protect the weirdest place on earth, from what he still didn't know. The people who meant the most to him were either dead, or on the other side of the planet. A gigantic blue genie had come out of the ocean and spit a white rock at him, which he was supposed to take care of like the Island itself.

And now he was pissed off that someone was trying to suggest that he was crazy.

It was so ridiculous. He doubled over, still laughing, while the other four gaped. Finally Rose said, "Honey, don't worry about Bernard's idle speculations. Let's just get ready to toss that first shovel of earth."

"Come on, Hugo, she's right," said Desmond. "If a grave's already dug, so much the better."

After the anger, after the following explosion of laughter, Hugo felt light, clear-headed. "It doesn't seem right. It's not what we're supposed to do."

"It's exactly what we have to do, brother."

"I know that, Des. But not here."

"If not here, then where?"

After a few seconds' thought, Hugo said, "The caves. We'll take him to the caves."

Ben frowned. "Why the caves?"

"But there was supposed to be a cave-in there," Bernard objected.

"They're fine. The cave-in, that was around the other side."

Rose said, "I never liked those caves. I never trusted them."

"Rose-" Hugo said.

She went on, the losses of all those years pouring out in her voice. "Down here is where our people are. The ones we knew, and loved and cared about. Of all people, you should know that."

"She has a point," Ben put in.

Rose whirled around to Ben, her face flushed. "And the first person we laid to rest there was because of your people. So I don't see as you have much say in it."

"Rose, please. This is Jack. You're fighting in front of Jack." Now everyone was staring at Hugo like he was indeed crazy.

Bernard put on his conciliatory tone again. "Hugo, don't you think Jack would want to be down here with everybody else?"

At first Hugo couldn't answer. It was like trying to describe a brand-new color to people who had never seen it before, or a place you'd visited to those who had never heard of it. A great hole opened inside Hugo, one where the right words simply weren't. All he knew was that Jack had never been completely happy on the beach, not really. Less than a week after they had crashed, something had led Jack to the caves. If Hugo had known the right words, he might have said that the caves were like the magnetic north, and that Jack was the compass needle which had to point in that direction, whether he wanted to or not.

If nothing else, Hugo wasn't going to place Jack in the grave which Ilana had intended for Ben.

With four pairs of eyes boring into him, Hugo had to give some kind of reason, though. "It's, um, kind of a Protector thing."

Rose, still angry, rolled her eyes.

In a soft voice Ben said, "The tomb of the kings."

Relief flooded over Hugo. Ben's remark was like the last turn of the padlock which makes it snap open. Even though the words were Ben's, not his, they rang true. That was why, after the crash, the survivors could never have lived in the caves, no matter how much Jack had wanted them to, no matter how hard he tried. The caves weren't for them. They were never meant to be. Then, before anyone could say anything else, Hugo said, "Ben's right. Look, we can wrap him in a tarp, and I can carry him up there."

Ben pointed over towards Boone Hill. "No need. There's the stretcher Ilana's people used to carry John Locke's body. The real Locke, I mean. We buried him there."

Hugo paused a moment, confused. "But I thought Locke's body fell down that cliff."

Ben said, "That wasn't the real Locke. It's complicated."

Rose gave an impatient shrug. "And you'll have many fire-lit evenings to fill us all in on the details, Benjamin. OK, Hugo, I guess you win. But we're not using that old tarp. We need something better to lay him to rest in. That's why I brought this."

The silky batik cloth was the size of a large bedspread, its deep green background laced with curlicues of pink and gold, shot through with long magenta spears which might have been tropical flowers, or flames. Hugo wrapped Jack's body in it, and Rose tucked the excess cloth neatly around Jack's head and feet. They laid him on the makeshift canvas stretcher, and set off on the walk to the caves.

So began the last long march of Jack Shephard to his final home, the stretcher borne by Desmond in front, Hugo behind. Rose led the procession with one of the torches, while Ben brought up the rear with the other. Alongside him walked Bernard.

These torches had been burning for almost a night and a day now, with no sign of sputtering or winding down.

They made slow progress as they picked their way through the thick jungle. An hour later they came to the caves, where a cool waterfall dropped its music into a wide, shallow pool. The smell of green moist earth rose up to welcome them.

Hugo said, "Guys, I just remembered. It's kind of a mess in there." He lowered his side of the bier, and Desmond followed, until Jack rested on the ground, with Desmond and Bernard on either side.

Ben handed his torch to Bernard, and joined Hugo in the cave. While Ben dragged a few smaller pieces of fuselage to one side, Hugo gathered up the splintered remains of the coffin lid. "We cleaned it up a lot when we were living up here. I guess we didn't do it enough."

"Whose was it?" Ben said.

"Jack's dad." Hugo didn't feel like mentioning how spooked Jack had sounded when, a few days ago, Jack had mentioned that he'd seen his father walking around on the Island, and that the coffin was empty.

They moved the coffin into the farthest recess, placing it in front of the crypt with the two other bodies. Ben nodded towards them. "Did you ever find out who they were?"

"Dude, I was hoping you could tell me. Jack said they'd been there forty, fifty years. More like four, five thousand. Well, maybe not five thousand. But they're mega-old." As the words spilled out, Hugo knew they were true.

Ben stared at the bodies for a few long seconds, then called to the group outside, "We're done in here."

They brought Jack in through the wide cave opening. Into the coffin Hugo and Desmond gently lowered the mortal remains of Christian Shephard's only son.

The torches made no smoke, but instead burned with a clear yellow flame which never sputtered. Everyone looked at Hugo in the golden torchlight, expecting him to say something. Throat choked up with emotion, he said to Rose, "You first. I can't. I need a minute."

Rose gave him a strange look, as if the uncanny torchlight, the close quarters, and the strong odor of roses had taken her out of herself. In a distant tone she said, "There's something I remember. Something that fits."

Hugo nodded for her to go on.

In a sing-song voice, swaying a little, she said,

"_My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?  
>Why are you so far from saving me,<br>so far from my cries of anguish? _

_Many bulls surround me;  
>strong bulls of Bashan encircle me.<br>Roaring lions that tear their prey  
>open their mouths wide against me. <em>

_But you, Lord, are never far from me.  
>You are my strength; you come quickly to help me. <em>

_You who fear the Lord, praise him!  
>All you descendants of Jacob, honor him!<br>Revere him, all you descendants of Israel! _

_For he has not despised or scorned  
>the suffering of <em>_his __afflicted one;  
>he has not hidden his face from him<br>but has listened to his cry for help_."

She leaned against Bernard as if exhausted. "That's all I can remember."

Hugo stepped forward. The part about the "bulls of Bashan" made his flesh creep, and "descendants of Jacob" sounded a little too close for comfort. He cleared his throat, hoping he wouldn't mess this up.

"Jack, amigo, you came to see me when I was at Santa Rosa, and when I told you 'It wants us to go back,' you said you didn't want to, that you never would. Never say never, right?

"Then, just before you fought Locke, I asked you why you came back. You said that it was because you were broken, and crazy enough to think that this Island could fix you. Then you shook your head, like you were a fool to think that. Well, Jack, you weren't a fool. We're all broken. But the Island fixed you, in ways you didn't even know. I love you, man. I love you, and we're all gonna miss you.

"Kate's gonna miss you, too. And Claire. Man, it sucks that you didn't get to know your sister better. But she'll be OK, 'cause Kate and Sawyer and her are all on their way to Tarawara, someplace like that. Wherever that is. They can't be here to say good-bye to you, though, so that's why I'm saying it for them."

Stinging tears clouded Hugo's eyes. He put a hand over his face, then turned to look at everyone assembled around the coffin. "That's all I got."

Desmond rested his arm on Hugo's shoulder for a second, close and comforting. To Jack he said, "When I went down into that pool, brother, I never thought it would be me standing here now instead of you. But I'll see you someday, in a better place."

Rose sobbed, and Bernard put his arm around her.

After a short while everyone filtered out except Hugo. He remained alone in the dim cave for a few moments, then knelt by the coffin and placed his hand on Jack's chest. "It should have been you doing this Protector thing, not me. But I'll try not to let you down."

He then untucked the shroud at Jack's head and placed the small white stone into Jack's front shirt pocket, before winding up the shroud again. "I figure this is yours as well as mine."

When Hugo emerged from the cave, Ben said, "Maybe we should be concerned about animals."

Hugo shuddered. In the first few days after the Oceanic 815 crash, wild boars had invaded the plane's wreckage and gone after the bodies. But with a confidence he didn't understand, he said, "No. Nothing's gonna come here."

"You mean we're just going to leave it open?"

"Yeah, Ben, that's just what we're gonna do."

Ben began to protest, but Bernard shook his head for him to be quiet.

"Here, give me those torches." Hugo jammed them into cracks on either side of the cave entrance. Their clear gold radiance seemed to draw the light out of the cave itself, leaving the interior full of dim shadows.

For a few seconds, Hugo stared into the quiet cave, which despite the dead inside, seemed warm and full of life. Then he turned, trying to control his face. "Time to head back, I guess."

Bernard and everyone else kept silence on the trek to the beach camp. Desmond carried the rolled-up stretcher over his shoulder, walking on ahead as if his journey home had already begun with these very steps.

As they turned onto the well-worn, sandy path, where tiny glimpses of the sea peeked out from between an archway of tall, thin-branched cedars, Bernard pulled Hugo aside. "I'm sorry for what I said earlier."

"Huh? For what?"

"I've never had a torch last much more than a couple of hours. And you were right about Jack's body. As Rose never fails to remind me, dental school isn't medical school, but that was unusual."

The beach spread out before them now, waves glittering white through the cool green arch of the trees. Hugo put his arm around Bernard and said, "We're cool, dude. And is it weirder than anything else that's happened?"

(_Continued_)


	7. The Monster in the Mirror

**Chapter ****7****: ****The Monster in the ****Mirror**

On the very same morning when her brother lay decked out for burial, Claire awoke to the rat-a-tat rhythm of heavy rain. Pre-dawn light fought its way into the motel room through grimy, colorless curtains. Claire stretched like a cat, stiff from sleeping on the floor on the thick pandamus mat which served for a couch, with only her wadded-up outer shirt as a pillow. In the queen-sized bed, Kate slept under a sheet worn almost translucent from many washings.

Claire stared up at the ceiling, letting herself be hypnotized by the rotating fan. Rain splashed against the windows, but above every other sound throbbed the relentless, bass hum of the ocean.

The mat hadn't been that great to sleep on, but it beat a damp pile of blankets in the middle of the jungle, or crawling stained and filthy into bed next to Kate. Kate might have been giving Claire strange looks last night, but Claire didn't need Kate's badly hidden, appalled glances to tell her what terrible shape she was in. All it took was the sight of Kate's clear skin; her soft and glossy hair which a few weeks of Island weather hadn't managed to frizz; the way she moved, full of health and well-being. Of course Claire wasn't going to climb into that bed, even if it was the only one in the room. She wasn't that crazy.

Claire skirted around to the lavatory and relieved herself in darkness, careful not to wake Kate. Soon, hiding in the dark wouldn't be possible, because already the bathroom was starting to fill with daylight. And Claire knew from feeling around in the dark that there was a mirror over the sink.

Back on the mat, Claire stared up at the ceiling, more terrified of that mirror than most of what had happened to her over the past three years.

Yesterday evening, she and Kate had been given a corner room at the Bikenibeu Lodge, a motel a few kilometers west of Bonriki International Airport. The bumpy ride to the motel had taken over an hour, and led through the strangest landscape Claire had ever seen.

The narrow strip of road sat as close to the ocean as it possibly could, with low scrub, slender palms and mangroves on either side. Eventually the road curved around, decorated with cinder-block houses and tiny, shabby shops. The land was so flat that sea-winds rocked the van whenever they drove through a clearing. The ocean gleamed like a pale blue plate on either side of the narrow atoll.

The drive took a long time because people, carts, goats, children, and chickens all meandered back and forth across the road, oblivious to vehicles. Every few minutes the driver stopped, then leaned out the window to chat with someone in the I-Kiribati language.

In the back of the van with the six of them sat the fat young policeman, Officer Nariki, looking as if he would never stop smiling. He treated the trip as if it were one of the greatest adventures he'd ever had, and maybe that was indeed the case. When they got to the motel, he offered his arm to Kate and Claire as they climbed out of the van, while Sawyer and the others just kept stone-blank faces. First Officer Nariki showed the women to their room, and then opened the adjacent door, gesturing to Sawyer and the rest of the men.

"Bridal suite," he said to the men, still smiling, and it was hard to tell if he was teasing or not. Even Kate was too weary to crack a joke at Sawyer's expense.

Now, with the hot morning sun practically leaping into the sky, Claire positioned herself by the thin motel door and listened, as people outside moved about and talked in soft tones. She cracked the door to find an older man and woman carrying trays of food towards a picnic shelter on the far end of the motel patio. The woman smiled and said, "You have to stay in your room till breakfast is ready."

The man said, "You're our guests. But you stay put now."

On the gray strip of shoulder near the road, Chief Biribo talked to the man in the suit from the airport, as well as a few other older I-Kiribati men. Occasionally they looked over towards where Claire stood, so she ducked inside and shut the door quickly.

"Morning," came Kate's sleepy voice from across the room. "What's up?"

"I dunno. Four, five blokes are having a convo outside, probably about us."

"Wonder what they're going to do with us?"

"Feed us, I hope. Smell the tea?"

Kate pulled on her jeans and shirt. "It's driving me crazy. Let's go get some."

"I, um, think they-"

But Kate was gone, dashing across the room, boots and socks in hand. She opened the door just as the older woman was about to knock.

"Time for breakfast," the woman said.

Claire and Kate peeked into the next-door room, where Sawyer and the other men had stayed. It was far larger than theirs, a kind of suite by the looks of it. Its small living room sported a narrow couch as well as a woven mat, and they had a larger bedroom with two queen-sized beds. From the look of the piled-up cushions and blankets in the living room, at least two men had camped out there.

"I'm Maleaua," the man said. "Welcome to our hotel. And this is my wife."

"We had to ask the other guests to move out, so it's just all of you," Mrs. Maleaua explained. "Orders from the government."

"But they're paying us for the whole hotel anyway," Mr. Maleaua added, clearly happy with the situation.

Sawyer slid next to Kate and said, "Guess they think we're still dangerous."

Claire scrutinized Sawyer as he walked over to a table covered with a couple of warming trays. When they'd all been shoved in that Hydra Island cage, Claire could smell the fear on him. But under the sour reek, like a low repetitive drumline beneath a melody, Sawyer stank of something else, too. Now most of his terror seemed to be gone, even though he looked around cautiously, as if expecting someone to jump out at him from the edges of the leaf-strewn motel patio. But that low, sad note remained.

Something terrible had happened to Sawyer, something that he hadn't talked about to anyone. Not while they were in the cage, not while he piloted the Elizabeth through choppy waters like a sailing pro. Certainly not now, as he tried hard as he could to look brave. But there was something there, and Claire could see that Kate knew what it was, too. Kate kept darting glances over at Sawyer when she thought he wasn't looking, the way Claire used to glance around when _her friend_ might descend upon her from the highest tree-tops without warning.

The pitch-black tea was hot and strong. Claire burnt her tongue a bit when she tried to gulp it right down, having had only boiled herbs for the past three years. Mrs. Maleaua had broken a raw egg on each of their scoops of rice, and Claire ate this first, pushing aside her pickled fish and vegetables.

It wasn't until the Maleauas had ducked out of sight, and the men on the roadside had gotten into Officer Biribo's Toyota van and driven away, that they felt free to speak.

"So, you got a phone in your room?" Sawyer said to Kate.

"Nope."

"Us neither. We got a jack, one of those old-fashioned kinds, but no phone."

Frank spoke up. "They're probably still checking us out, calling embassies. And from the looks of it earlier, there are differing opinions what to do with us."

"That's what I'm afraid of," said Kate.

Miles picked up his last few rice-grains with his fingers. "Well, I don't know about you, but I'm settling in to enjoy a nice tropical vacation. Of course, a few more congenial room-mates might be in order."

Richard gave a half-laugh, more of a snort.

Kate fixed both Sawyer and Miles with a steely glare. "Speaking of which, what was that nonsense yesterday about us being 'engaged?'"

Frank poured himself some more tea and added a few spoonfuls of sugar. "Don't blame them, Kate, it was my idea. This isn't Hawai'i or Tahiti, if you hadn't noticed. Folks here are pretty conservative. You see that big Catholic church we passed on our way in?"

In an icy tone Kate said, "No, I can't say that I did."

"I just thought it might make things go better."

"Well, the next time you get a bright idea like that, run it by me first."

Sawyer laughed, even if the mirth didn't reach his eyes. "Freckles, you're just mad I got Missy Claire here, and you're stuck with Miles."

"Hey, I'll swap anytime," Miles said.

Nobody laughed, and Claire ignored him. She pointed to Sawyer's plate, the rice and egg untouched. "You mind? I'll trade you."

He handed her his plate with a grimace, and she passed him her own, still full of fish and vegetables.

As she slurped the egg down, Frank said, "You know, Claire, you can get pretty sick from those. And that reminds me, don't drink the water, either."

Claire stared at him and in a blank voice said, "You know, if I'd worried about bad water or raw eggs, I'd have been dead three years ago." She looked around the group, and they seemed to sit on the other side of the world from her, rather than just across a table. Even after hearing Sayid's story of how Miles and Sawyer had lived on the Island for three years in the 1970s, to her they still seemed pampered and spoiled.

Which reminded Claire of something else. "By the way, did Sayid decide not to come along with you?" She wanted to add, _Or did you ditch him like you did me?_ but thought better of it.

The long look between Sawyer and Kate told Claire all she needed to know. "He didn't make it, did he?"

Sawyer was the first to speak. "Your friend there blew up our sub. Sayid was the only reason we got out alive. Some of us, at least."

"Claire, I'm sorry," Kate said. "I know you were close-"

"We weren't close. He wasn't close to anybody." Then Claire ran down the mental list of everyone else who'd gotten onto that doomed ship a few days earlier. "So, Sun and Jin, too?"

Kate just shook her head.

At first Claire didn't even want to speak the final name. When Kate had let Claire on board the Elizabeth, Claire had gone over to sit by him, as a kind of challenge. Sure, it had hurt when everyone ran away from her, leaving her behind in the bush. But that he could leave her too, that was almost too much to bear. Claire knew whose idea it had been, and it wasn't his. Still, he'd gone along with it, hadn't he?

So even before the Elizabeth's anchor was raised, Claire had squatted down by him as a kind of challenge, and just looked over at him, waiting. At that moment, she couldn't have said what she specifically had in mind. She just wanted him to see her, and maybe tell her, Why?

She'd expected him to just get up and move. But he didn't. Instead, he crept closer to her, so that both of them sat like two guardians on either side of the door which led below-deck. His eyes were big and sad. Finally he said in a low voice that he was sorry, sorry that they'd left without her and Sayid.

It wasn't OK, not really, but she whispered that it was anyway, because the gentleness in his tone broke her resistance. For three years she'd heard sweet seductiveness and clever lies, or harsh shouts, curses, or foul names.

But never tenderness. No tenderness, for three long years.

Then, in the Hydra Island cage, she didn't know what to do with herself at first. Except for him, everyone stared at her like she was a bomb ready to go off. She crouched in a corner and tried to ignore the stink of urine and mold.

He filled their end of the cage with heavy, stolid assurance. When he patted the space next to him on the concrete bench, inviting her to sit, it about broke her heart. Before she knew it, she had taken his hand, and he didn't shrug it off. Instead, he just let her rest her head on his soft shoulder.

When her trembling stopped, he asked her what had happened. She blinked back tears as she told him the tiniest bits.

The last glimpse she'd had of his curly head was when he beat a clumsy, hesitant descent down the submarine hatch. Then as _her friend_ rushed towards the sub, Sawyer had closed the hatch door, and the boat slipped away from the dock as easily as her hopes. As everything had slipped away, it seemed.

Claire looked Sawyer full in the face, screwed up every bit of courage she had left and said, "What about Hurley?"

And then her heart sang, because the dead look in Sawyer's eyes at the mention of Sayid, Sun, and Jin wasn't there. In fact, that small crinkle around the edges of Sawyer's expression told her all that she needed to know.

Kate had to speak, though, as if bringing out the words could bring hope to life. "Hurley was with Jack. He and Ben. They were taking Jack, um, somewhere, I don't know. So they could keep the Island from breaking apart." Then Kate drew in a deep breath like a sob. "Jack was wounded, bleeding. I'm hoping-"

Claire said, "I just found a brother, OK? I don't want to lose him just yet." And that might not be all she'd lost. It suddenly became desperately important to her to believe that somehow, Hurley was alive and well on the Island, even if right now she traveled in exactly the opposite direction.

"We can hope together," Kate said, giving Claire a small, encouraging smile. But that didn't wipe out the haunted look in Sawyer's eyes when Kate said that.

* * *

><p>Later, in the motel room, Kate went through the suitcase she'd claimed for herself. "They must have rifled through it, but everything's here. It's just a mess." She began to lay clothes out on the bed. "Want to help?"<p>

"I'll pass." There was something Claire had to do, something she'd been struggling with all morning, even as she helped Mrs. Maleaua clear away the breakfast dishes, even as Frank, Miles and Richard had talked away the morning with their stories. Sawyer, though, had sat in silence, saying nothing of himself.

But those distractions did nothing to get rid of the monster, the one who lurked in the bathroom. Now it was time for the showdown. It had to be done in just the right way, though. If Claire darted her eyes in the wrong direction, or looked up at the wrong angle, it would catch her between its toothy jaws, crunch her into pieces, and break her beyond repair.

She'd managed to hide from the monster in the airplane lav by keeping her eyes scrunched tight, feeling her way around in the tiny stall like a blind person. For like all creatures of the shadows, the monster couldn't come out into the light. Claire would have to drag it out into the bright light of mid-day, force it into the sun, and maybe then, just maybe, if it didn't destroy her first, it would melt away, and she might actually remain.

Time to do battle, then. She scrunched up her courage and backed into the small bathroom, pulling the door shut. She turned around slowly to avoid the mirror over the sink, then faced the shower stall, where a mildew-streaked plastic curtain dangled. Kate's wet underthings hung over the curtain rod.

What a miracle a shower was. If you turned on the faucet, hot water would play over you like a waterfall. Claire promised herself that if she survived her battle, if she wasn't destroyed in the process, she would do just that.

But first, she would have to face the monster. Claire screwed her eyes shut and felt for the sink. She bowed her head, supporting herself with her hands in case she fell over. _Do it. __If you don't, you never will_. Slowly she opened her eyes and stared into the cracked sink with its rust-streaked drain. Then she raised her eyes to face the monster, which stared back at her from the mirror.

For the first time in three years, Claire saw her own face.

She knew by feel how sharp her cheekbones were, that her hair was a rat-tailed wreck, that the bones poked through her hips, chest and elbows. In her mind, though, she always saw herself as she was that last morning in the Barracks before her house blew up, when Hurley reached for Aaron and said, "Get some more sleep, Claire. I've got this."

It was the last clear memory of herself, her old self, and she clung to it as tightly as she had clung to her passport.

The pale, washed-out witch who stared back at her was almost unrecognizable. She raised her hands to her rough, chapped cheeks, lightly slapping them as if the dull pain would drive the recognition home. It hurt when she pulled the shaggy hair, which meant that it must be hers. Haunted blue hollows underscored by puffy bags stared out at her from the mirror. Tiny networks of lines etched their way across pale, fragile skin. In her temple a blue vein pulsed, and her left eye twitched.

A mad, violent thought came to her. This wasn't her face, not the one she remembered, not the same cheek on which Hurley had planted a small, shy kiss right before taking Aaron into his arms. On that day of the explosion, nestled against a cool linen pillowcase, Claire's old, more familiar face flushed as she touched the spot which had been kissed.

The face in the mirror wasn't hers any longer, though. _He_ had done this to her, the one who called himself _her friend_, the one whose true name she refused to speak even now. _He'd_ somehow enchanted her, glued this cheap Halloween mask over her true face. And perhaps all she needed to do was pierce it with her ragged nails, rip it off into shreds, toss it to the cracked gray linoleum floor and kick the pieces into the corner like garbage. Then her true face would shine once more. Because this wasn't her, it couldn't be.

She stuck her nails into her cheeks, hard, and the sudden shock of pain made her halt. This was no mask, no trick, no illusion. What had started out as a scratch turned into a stroke as her hands traveled down over her cheeks, slid past her chin to her scrawny neck and prominent collar bones, to the torn, filthy layers of shirts below. This was her, all of her, what Aaron and her mum would see (how was that possible, she still couldn't wrap her mind around it), what Kate and Hurley had seen.

Claire first began to cry, and then to sob.

* * *

><p>When Kate heard the torn, wrenching sounds coming from the bathroom, she ignored it at first. South Tarawa was loud, with the constant hammering of sea-winds, the rumble of vehicles up and down the roadway, the yapping of dogs. In the house over to the right, some men were having a loud argument in I-Kiribati. Children laughed and shouted as they played soccer in the middle of the roadway. Further, the ceiling fan whumped and clattered even more loudly than the one in Bonriki Airport. So it took a moment for Kate to recognize the choked sobs coming from the bathroom as Claire's.<p>

Kate ran in to find Claire lying in a tight heap on the smeared linoleum as she rocked back and forth, face buried in her hands. Panic surged through Kate. Was Claire sick? And then a worse and more terrifying thought, Had she tried to hurt herself?

She shook Claire's shoulder gently. "Claire? Honey, what's the matter?"

"It's me, oh God, it's me, it's really me, what am I going to do?"

"Come on, let's sit down." She pulled Claire to her feet, but the toilet had no lid, so Kate guided her into the main room and lowered her on the pandamus mat.

Kate had soothed many a skittish horse in her time, including one mare in labor which her father was convinced was going to lose it, fling herself about, and maybe even break a leg. Kate had let her mind go blank and laid her hand on the mare's side. In that cloudy, gentle space without words or thought, pure comfort radiated from her hand to the terrified horse's body. An hour later the foal was born.

Now Kate did the same for Claire. Kate sat there with no words, no thoughts, not telling Claire to relax or that it would be OK. She gave Claire nothing but a firm, comforting hand on her shoulder until the sobs stopped, until Claire wiped her nose across the back of her hand, and laid her head on Kate's knee.

Only then, in between little teary gasps, was Claire able to talk. "Look at me. Look what _he_ did to me."

Kate ran her hand through Claire's hair, testing the shagginess, the matting, the dreadlocks that had fused into a single solid mass underneath, confident now that words would help, rather than make things worse. "Claire, look, I already tried the shower. It's not great, but you know, there's not a lot that warm water can't fix. Come on, I'll help you."

So Kate stripped down because if she got her own clothes wet, God knows how long it would take to dry them in this humidity. With practiced hands used to giving a child his nightly bath, Kate helped Claire out of her own things as well. Then she got a good look at what Auntie Merey had already seen: the gunshot wound scar, the brand, the whole host of other cuts and burns and abrasions which spread over Claire's body like faint white or pink tattoos.

The shower's water pressure was lower than it had been earlier in the day, but thank God something still sputtered out of the rusted old shower head. Claire closed her eyes and let the brackish, smelly water run over her face, while Kate grabbed the tiny bottle of two-in-one shampoo and conditioner. The Bikenibeu was no state-side motel, as there wasn't even any soap. Luckily, though, the woman whose suitcase Kate had nabbed had diligently stocked up, because she'd amassed quite a collection of sweet-smelling soaps and little plastic bottles, all from different hotels.

So Kate washed Claire's hair, running her hands through the matted blonde mess, and like a child Claire let Kate wash her face, neck, and the rest of her. Brownish-gray water streamed down over Claire's bony body into the drain below.

"Feels good, doesn't it?" Kate said, and Claire only nodded, grinning at the warm, slow baptism of running water.

Toweled off, fresh for the first time in years, Claire sat on the edge of their bed while Kate looked through a dock kit. "I don't know how she got these scissors through security," Kate remarked. She set the scissors aside, then tentatively picked the comb through Claire's hair.

It was a rough go. Finally Kate said, "You know, it might be easier-"

"Cut it off, all of it. I don't want to see it any longer."

"You sure?"

Claire nodded, and so instead of trying to comb through the mat, Kate began to cut it away. Great clumps of hair snarled beyond redemption fell to the linoleum floor, until nothing was left but a fluffy bob which fell right below Claire's ears.

When Kate was done, Claire put her hands to her head. "It feels so light, like a huge weight's come off." Then she gave the pile of discarded hair a little kick. "I wish we could burn it. And we should get rid of those old clothes, too."

"We can. There's a rubbish fire going out back."

"I want to see my new haircut, what it looks like."

"Not yet, let's get you dressed first. And I've found something else in the luggage."

This bag was zipped full to bursting. Kate and Claire spread out the little bottles, tubes, compacts, and brushes all across the bed, like a couple of young girls exploring make-up for the first time.

Claire looked over the olive and coral hues with a little frown. "These are more your colors than mine. I always fancied the pinks and light blues." But she let Kate paint her face, then lightly powder it, and to Kate it seemed that with every daub and stroke, Claire brightened.

"OK, now you can look."

The change was remarkable. Claire still wore a haunted expression, but her face had softened around the edges as much as her hair. She said, "You probably think I'm silly and vain."

"No, I don't. I can't begin to imagine what you've been through."

Claire grabbed handfuls of discarded hair and her old Island clothes. "Where's that burning rubbish?"

The back of the motel was a disaster, all strewn about with empty bottles, corroded barrels and scraps of tin roofing. Through a stand of limp palms, the sea shone pure and beautiful after all that driving rain. One of the Maleauas must have started the fire just recently, as it still put out an oily black smoke. Claire got as close as she dared, then tossed in the filthy bundle. As it caught fire, the air filled with a burning chicken-feather smell, and some of her loose hair got caught in the updraft.

Claire could feel the make-up melting off her face in the heat, as she watched the mess burn. "That's the last of _him._" Then she turned to Kate. "_He_ was going to make me his moll."

"His what?"

"You know. Girlfriend, mistress. When _he_ got his body. I mean, Locke's body."

"Oh, my God, Claire. Did he-"

"No, actually _he_ didn't, in the end. I have no idea why. It was all _he_ talked about, before. After that, nothing. Like _he'd_ lost interest or something."

"Thank God."

"Yes," Claire said.

Back in the room, they packed up the cosmetics and tidied up while Kate waited for the real questions to begin, the big ones which hadn't come up before now. They were going to cool their heels here in Tarawa for what might be a very long time, and it looked like there wouldn't be much else to do but talk. Thus it came as no surprise to Kate when Claire settled herself on the mat and leaned over, her voice soft. "OK, so tell me about Aaron."

So Kate did, all of it.

(_continued_)


	8. The Lighthouse

**Chapter 8: The Lighthouse**

The next day after Jack's burial dawned pale and overcast, but the clouds weren't the kind that left you sad or running for shelter from rain. Instead, the rising sun painted them with a pink radiance, leaving the sea tinged with lavender. Hugo woke to Bernard's out-of-tune singing, as the older man walked past with a sack in one hand and a sharp knife in the other.

"Hey, Bernard."

"Ah, awake at last. You can fish, or help Rose, or you can help me." Rose and Bernard had set up housekeeping in their old spot right behind the food tent, where Rose already had a pot of water on the boil.

"Aw, come on, Bernard, I told you I like to sleep in."

Bernard just laughed, so Hugo rolled out of his blankets anyway.

It wasn't much of a decision. Bernard had an uncanny knack for getting mussels off the sides of tide-dashed rocks, probably from all that practice scraping goo off people's teeth. Soon after Bernard had joined the beach camp, he'd talked Hugo into collecting mussels with him. But Hugo's first time was his last, when he got a nasty cut across the back of the hand. Sure, it had healed up almost at once, but after that, mussels always seemed like more trouble than they were worth. There were easier ways to get your breakfast.

Behind the wreck of his old tent, Hugo unearthed his old spears, running his finger gingerly over the still-sharp edges. He'd cut them from soda cans picked up from the beach, because right after the crash people just tossed stuff every which away.

Hugo had run up and down the shore gathering trash, ignoring the annoyed looks from some of the castaways, especially Sawyer. Mostly Hugo scavenged alone, but sometimes Claire joined him. She couldn't bend over much with a belly full of baby, but she held a canvas travel bag which he filled with cans, bits of plastic, and fragments of aluminum foil, all of which proved useful in the following weeks.

That was forever ago, though. With a small sigh, Hugo grabbed a couple of spears and headed down to the sea-strand. He stood knee-deep in the surf while shadowy dark forms drifted back and forth in the shallows beneath the waves.

Fish sure got brave, didn't they? They'd never come this close before. Hugo's first stab missed, but the next one speared a fat wriggling shape, two or three pounds at least. He said, "Sorry, fish," as it continued to thrash on the end of the spear. Then he caught two more.

In the past, he'd fish for an hour before getting a catch like this. Laying his three fish in a row, he pulled out a knife and gutted them cleanly and expertly right there at the shoreline, then tossed the handfuls of guts to the gulls. A quick rinse in sea water, thread them up on a stringer, and there was breakfast.

Bernard had brought back a sack full of mussels, which he dumped straight into the pot. Hugo filleted the fish, then seared the thick slices on flat stones placed over the fire. The fatty fish sizzled, sending up a delightful smell.

"These mussels are beautiful, Bernard," Rose said. She stirred them around in the boiling water with handfuls of sliced lemons. The shellfish had already opened, revealing their pale, plump bodies.

"This is a feast, Rose," Desmond said.

"Magnificent," Ben added.

Rose dished out lemony mussels and fried fish onto tin plates left over from the Swan Station. "Good fish, good meat, good God, let's eat."

When the broth was cool enough to drink, they passed it around, each spooning it out with a shell. There was none of the relaxed conversation of people confident in a refrigerator full of food. Instead, everyone ate with the single-minded intensity of those who depend entirely on whatever bounty nature provides, who know that she can be capricious in her gifts. And no one took silence for ingratitude.

Rose collected the bones and shells in the pot. "Have to dig a trash pit real soon."

"Umm, digging," Hugo said. "Can it wait? You know, digestion and all."

Bernard said, "Let it be for awhile, Rose. We have a few things to decide."

Rose was busy feeding Vincent fish scraps and shooing him away from the loose bones. "So, what's the number one thing to do? The most important?"

Desmond spoke up. "There could be people from the Ajira plane up on Hydra Island."

"Sorry, dude, but there aren't," Hugo said. "After Jack busted us out of those cages, we made tracks to the plane fast as we could. We kind of stumbled on a pile of bodies. Guess the smoke monster got them."

"I seriously doubt that," Ben said. "There was a reason the Dharma Initiative did research on Hydra Island. It was the one place that the monster couldn't go. And it wouldn't have left bodies stacked in a neat pile. "

Rose looked up. "I guess you'd know, wouldn't you?"

"Rose-" Hugo said, trying to forestall an argument.

Bernard interrupted him. "Maybe some got away."

Ben gave a small sigh. "Charles Widmore's men were probably very thorough."

"How do you know that?" Bernard asked.

Ben gave him a cool look. "Because I trained some of them, back in the days before Charles and I had our falling-out."

Hugo wasn't convinced. "Why would Widmore kill all those people, Ben? His story was that Jacob sent him here."

"I don't know. Maybe Charles and Jacob had similar views on collateral damage."

Collateral damage, that's what they called it. No matter how many Ajira 316 tickets Hugo might have bought, the flight crew had no choice. And a few passengers managed to score tickets before Hugo went wild with his credit card. Worse yet, even though Hugo had seriously thought about just warning them all right there at the gate, he knew how that would have ended. He'd have gotten dragged back to Santa Rosa, and the plane would have probably crashed anyway, if not on the Island, then maybe in the middle of the Pacific.

Desmond broke Hugo's gloomy chain of thought. "I do want to go home, Hurley. Tell me, how do I do that?"

"I dunno, Des. And I don't know anything about boats, or- Hey, wait a minute. What about Locke's sailboat, the one we borrowed to go to Hydra Island? Sawyer and Kate sailed it back over there to get to the plane."

"A sailboat? There was a sailboat?" Desmond's voice rose with emotion.

"Some kind of yacht. Sawyer called it the _Elizabeth_."

Desmond shook his head in slow amazement. "Brother, that wasn't Locke's. It was mine. She was a beautiful ship, a Swan 57. The Others nicked her three years ago, and I figured those bastards had just sunk her or something. No offense, Ben."

"None taken."

"So where is she, then?"

Hugo answered, "Probably over by Hydra Island, where the plane took off from. Like I said yesterday, they got as far as Tawara, wherever that is."

"It's Tarawa," Desmond corrected. "In the Republic of Kiribati, smack dab in the middle of the Pacific Ocean. Tarawa's the capitol. And just how would you know they made it there, brother?"

There would come a time when Hugo would tell everyone about his visitors, he promised himself. But this wasn't it. "The same way you knew you could go down into the Heart of the Island and not get fried to a crisp."

Desmond shrugged, giving up the argument. "Aye. So you think it really would be that easy, just sail the _Elizabeth_ right out of here? I tried that before, if you recall, and ended up right back where I started."

"Yeah, but that was with Jacob."

"Are you sure? How do you know it was Jacob, and not the Island itself?"

"I don't. But if you want to go home, we got to get the boat."

"It's worth a shot," Desmond said. "But it depends on a lot of things. Is she seaworthy, is she provisioned, and most important, will the Island let me go?"

"Can you build a raft to get over to Hydra Island?" Bernard asked.

Desmond shook his head. "Up the eastern coast, where the Looking Glass used to be, there's a channel between the main Island and a small one offshore. The currents are weird there, unpredictable. I don't trust a makeshift raft to get through. And that doesn't even include the rough seas farther up the coast. An outrigger canoe could make it. But not a raft."

"Too bad we don't have an outrigger," Hugo said.

"Oh, but we do," said Ben. "One washed up half a mile down the beach."

Hugo stared at Ben. "That could of come a little sooner. When did you find this out?"

"Instead of sleeping, I went walking just before sunrise. It clears my head."

"Sounds like it's settled, then," said Hugo, ignoring the jibe. "Let's go find the _Elizabeth_, Ben. You, Des, and me."

Ben hesitated. "I'm not the sea-faring type. Anyway, I have an errand of my own to run."

Rose gave Ben a sharp look. "What errand's that?"

Ben stared back at her with practiced coolness. "Penance." He didn't elaborate.

Everyone fell quiet for a few seconds, until Bernard spoke. "I will admit that I'm not keen on us splitting up."

Rose gave a little scoff. "Bernard, we'll be fine. We managed three years on our own, even in the middle of all that craziness." She waved at the beach camp as if its disorder offended her personally. "This place needs some organizing. It looks like a hurricane swept through here. Stuff's been blown up, tossed around, messed up-"

Hugo leaned over to Bernard. "It'll be OK. If Desmond's boat's not up there, we'll come straight back."

"Right," Bernard said, but he sounded dubious.

Desmond pulled himself to his feet. "So, mate, if we're heading up east, it's time to raise anchor."

* * *

><p>It was mid-morning when Hugo and Desmond started their northward paddle up the Island's east coast. The day was clear and bright, and they moved along easily, helped by a strong northeasterly current. Neither man said much as they passed by the huge rock-fall where Rose and Bernard's house had once stood. The waterfall had picked up volume as it poured over the edge in a heavy white cataract, swirled over the rocky pool at the bottom, before cascading down to the sea.<p>

Ocean-spray soaked their clothes. "Nature's own air-conditioning," Desmond remarked.

On they paddled, until Desmond pointed to a flat white-sand beach to their left. "That's where the cable was."

"I bet that cable's gone. At least the part that was in the ocean. I think the station's gone, too."

"Perhaps during the earthquakes."

"Maybe," replied Hurley. It was like passing over a grave, and he said a little silent prayer as he gazed at the sea below.

"Shall we go ashore, follow it inland?"

"Last time I did that, things got, um, interesting. But I don't think it's gonna matter now. Danielle's gone, too."

"The French woman? The one who liked to nick babies?"

Hugo just shook his head. "Yeah, three years now."

"Sorry, brother."

"I know." The sadness hit Hugo, thick and fierce. Rousseau, Alex, her boyfriend Karl, all gone. Jacob was some protector, wasn't he? Alex and Karl were just kids, and Jacob could have stopped it, if he'd wanted to. Why not?

The mindless slap of the tide against the side of the canoe had no answer.

Hugo rested a bit from paddling, trailing his hand through the eternal back-and-forth of the sea. "Kinda weird, not having to run anywhere, to do something we don't understand."

Desmond laughed.

"'Course, not that I understand any of this anyway."

"Sometimes you don't have to understand it. You just live it." Desmond put his own paddle down, and the canoe slowed a bit, although the current pushed them going. "I wanted to be a monk, you know."

"You were a monk? You didn't drink like a monk. You cursed pretty good, too."

"Oh, believe me, monks know how to drink. And they're even better than sailors at cursing. I was just a monk-in-training, though. They didn't think I had what it took. But it worked out for the best, because then I met Penny."

"I bet she's really worried about you."

"Aye. It's strange, though. Over the years, I've probably been missing Penny longer than I've been with her, if you add it up time-wise. Finally we got married, little Charlie was born, and this Island seemed almost like a dream. Then Widmore's boys nabbed me from the hospital, and I woke up here. Believe me, I made them pay. I'd been a soldier in the Royal Scots Regiment, and I knew how to hurt people. If I'd had half a chance, I'd have killed them all right then and there."

"Yeah, you were scary sometimes."

"Am I still?"

"No, you're pretty chill." Hugo swallowed. This would be hard to say. "I am gonna miss you. No joke. But I understand, you gotta do what you gotta do."

"Indeed. Look over there. Those woods look familiar, don't they now?"

"That's the spot where we camped with Charlie and Jin."

"Yeah, good times," Desmond remarked, in a tone which clearly said they weren't.

The coast turned sharply northward. After awhile, they passed by a broad, wide beach with pale green-tinged sand. The wind changed, and a few moments later a low-lying fog blew in, so that the sunlight had to fight its way through.

"That's a nice beach over there," Hugo said. "Let's go check it out."

They pulled the outrigger ashore, then walked along the strand for awhile. Hugo said, "This beach is better than ours, too, 'cause there's water." He pointed to several spots where thin bright streams poured down from the cliff face onto the beach.

"We should refill while we have the chance," Desmond said.

Hugo filled his water bottle, then lowered himself onto a wide rock. From his back-pack he pulled some fish from breakfast, wrapped in a banana leaf. "You know, if there had been anybody left from Hydra Island, they probably would have come here. It's the perfect beach."

"Pretty exposed, though. Widmore's men weren't the trusting types. My guess is that if they got off Hydra Island, they'd have moved inland."

The calm certainty Hugo had grown to enjoy was conspicuously absent. It wasn't a warning which nagged at him, just an unpleasant awareness. A sense which said, Stay alert.

As if the landscape could give him an answer, Hugo walked a bit inland. The land spread out into a green plateau much like the Mesa, but narrower and more flat. Hawks, or perhaps small eagles soared overhead, once in awhile dive-bombing to the grass below. Further inland, a handful of dark shapes slowly moved about on the flat green expanse.

"Hey, Desmondo, what's out there where the buffalo roam?"

"Boar, maybe?"

"Do boar just wander around out in the open like that?"

"Search me, brother. If they're boar, they're very large. On the other hand, if they're cattle, say, they're fairly small."

Hugo swallowed, hard. "If those are boar, I do not want to meet them out here."

"Hurley, they're probably just cattle."

"I guess. You remember that Russki dude, the one who fixed Naomi?"

"Mikhail?"

"Yeah, him. Kate said that Mikhail had some cows. Horses, too. Maybe they got loose."

"Aye, that could be it, then." Desmond surveyed the valley one final time, then gave a heavy sigh. "There's nothing here, brother. No sign of fire, not even any footprints." Desmond was just about to head back to the beached canoe, when he gave a glance up at the soaring northern cliffs. "What in bloody hell is that?"

Hugo peered up into the mist himself. A steep rocky promontory jutted out over the ocean, and at the tallest point there stood a tall brick structure, pale in the milky fog.

"That? Just the lighthouse."

Desmond gave him an odd look. "I can see that for myself. What I can't see is how I sailed in circles around this Island a hundred times, yet never saw it."

"Well, if it makes you feel any better, nobody else did, either. Till Jacob told me to take Jack there."

"And for what?"

Hugo shifted, a little uncomfortable. "Um, turned out Jacob was the one who brought Widmore here. And you, too."

"Bloody hell he did."

"Sorry, dude."

Desmond shook his head again, as if he couldn't believe his eyes. "So, let's go have a look at Jacob's mysterious lighthouse, eh?"

Hugo looked over the cliff-side with a dubious eye. "Steep climb, Des."

"We can take it slow. We should almost be to Hydra Island anyway."

About halfway up the rocky hill, the wind changed again, bringing in more thick, salty sea-fog. By the time Desmond and Hugo reached the highest point, the lighthouse's top was barely visible. It was impossible to see anything out to sea.

The door was still half off its hinges, where Jack had kicked it in. They thumped up the heavy wooden stairs, the lighthouse's interior dim from so little sunlight. Hugo panted a bit and let Desmond go on ahead. Even so, when they reached the top, he didn't have that chest-bursting, heart-pounding exhaustion he had when climbing up with Jack.

Careful not to step on splintered glass, Desmond looked around like a kid in a toy store. "This is amazing."

"You should of been here before Jack went postal on it."

"And here's the smoking gun." Desmond picked up the long, battered brass instrument which Jack had used to smash the threefold mirror.

"What's that, some kind of telescope?"

Desmond turned it over several times, examining it, looked through it a few times. "Don't think so." He walked over a brass frame set into the stone parapet where the scope had rested. "Well, look at this. You ever do any surveying, brother?"

"Can't say that I have."

"If I'm not mistaken, it's some kind of theodolite. Look, here's some more of it."

Hugo scratched his head, clearly baffled. Desmond continued to putter with the brass tube, trying to reposition it into its frame, cursing a little when it wouldn't fit. When Hugo got tired of watching Desmond fuss around, he looked over the large gear wheel, on which were written so many names. He found his, "Reyes," next to the number 8. As he pulled the chain, the gears made a low, scraping noise. Finally the pointer came to rest right at his name.

"So, what you think that thing was for, Des?"

Desmond examined the brass frame. "If I'm not mistaken, what you can do is look through here, and determine what time of year it is, from where the sun is when it rises. Like at Maeshowe, in Scotland."

"May-hoo?"

"Stonehenge, then. You've heard of Stonehenge?"

"Who hasn't heard of Stonehenge?"

"When the sun rose at just the right point, its light pointed to just the right spot. In Maeshowe it lit up a room. At Stonehenge, the light hit a certain stone. That let you know it was the day of the winter solstice."

"What's a solstice?"

Desmond sighed, clearly not in the mood to give an astronomy lesson. "You know how the days are long in the summer and short in the winter?"

"Not in Australia. Claire told me that it was the other way around."

"Let's just worry about Scotland and LA right now. The winter solstice is the shortest day of the year, while the summer solstice is the longest. Then you have spring and fall days in between, called equinoxes, where the days and the nights are roughly of equal length. And in between each solstice and equinox is a cross-quarter day."

"Dude, how do you know all this? And worse, how do you remember it?"

"Sailors used to navigate by the sun, the moon, and the stars. Look here, this was set up to show all of them. Each solstice, each equinox, and the days in between." Then Desmond frowned. "Thing is, it would have to be adjustable for latitude, especially if the Island moved."

Hugo threw up his hands in frustration. "Des, what does this have to do with this big wheel with all our names written on it?"

Desmond set down the theodolite and examined the gear wheel. "My name's not on it. Why'd Jack break it, anyway?"

This was going to be hard to explain. "It's gonna sound kind of crazy."

"Try me."

"Jacob gave me a whole bunch of complicated instructions, how to turn the wheel, adjust a few things at the mirrors, stuff like that. But Jack started playing around with the wheel, made it point to his name. And then he saw his house, from when he was a kid. In the mirror. That's when he freaked." It had been terrible when Jack had screamed at him, and he winced at the memory.

"So, it was a kind of panopticon, then."

Hugo had given up on all Desmond's strange references. Then something occurred to him. "It might still work. Let's see if we can find a big piece of mirror."

They found a section about a foot across. Desmond held it up, so that it was surrounded by the big rectangular brass frame which wrapped around the gear wheel. Hugo said, "Hey, who knows. Maybe I can see my mom."

"Anything there?" Desmond said.

"Just a bunch of fog. Move it around a bit."

But no matter how Desmond positioned the mirror segment, it showed nothing but cloudy pale gray.

"I guess Jack busted it for sure."

"Well, we'll never know, will we?"

* * *

><p>Desmond didn't say anything all the way back down the steep cliff. When they got to the shoreline, he shoved the outrigger into the surf a bit harder than necessary, then launched himself in without looking at Hugo. Hugo clambered in after him, afraid he'd tip the boat over, but it held steady.<p>

Paddling was harder work now, and they had to pull together rhythmically with no wasted movements, as tricky cross-currents swept them back and forth on the rough surf.

Hugo pointed out over to the east. "Are we lost, Des?"

Desmond gave a small shake of irritation. "How do you get lost paddling around a shoreline?"

"It's just that, uh, Hydra Island's pretty big, right? I mean, it has a runway you can land a plane on."

"That's right."

"Well, either we got a long way to go, or we're lost. Because shouldn't we be seeing it out there?"

Desmond stared out at the eastern ocean. "It's still pretty foggy."

"So how far away is Hydra Island supposed to be from the main Island?"

"About three klicks."

"In miles, man."

"I'm supposed to know miles, but you don't know kilometers? Very well, then. A little under two miles."

"Desmondo, there's nothing there."

"Let's keep on heading up along the coast, and hope the visibility clears when we round this point. Maybe it's around the next bend." But Desmond sounded unsure.

As they paddled around the peninsula, the beach along the coastline disappeared. Large piles of rocks played home to colonies of sea birds, which screamed at the canoe as it rounded the tip. Desmond paddled like a machine, tense and unspeaking.

Finally Hugo broke the silence. "Des, I know you're down about the lighthouse being broken. But maybe you don't need it to get home after all."

Desmond's shoulders relaxed. "Aye, that'd be grand, wouldn't it?"

The coastline made a ninety-degree dog-leg towards the west, and all at once two great fronts of water swept into each other. A huge wave lifted the canoe about ten feet, then dropped it almost as suddenly. Another swell bore it up again, while a cross-wave splashed over them, pushing the canoe to one side, but the outrigger float kept it steady.

"Pull!" Desmond called out, and they both paddled hard, struggling to stay atop the surging waves. The canoe rocked violently from side to side as they pulled. Finally they cleared the thin spit of land which stuck out like a tongue from the larger peninsula, and drew in closer to the shore, where the waves were gentler.

Up ahead, the fog and mist cleared. They drifted for a few moments, panting and exhausted. Desmond said, "Brother, that was some luck. I thought we were sunk there."

Hugo was the first to see the boat. "Des, look over there!"

In a rocky inlet rested the _Elizabeth,_ a couple hundred feet from the huge, jumbled rocks which passed for a shoreline. There was no beach whatever, just a solid face of steep green and brown cliffs. An obstacle course of sharp boulders surrounded the _Elizabeth_, the tall rocks surrounded by swirling white-caps, as the ocean twisted and turned between them.

Desmond said, "I ran this channel between Hydra and the shore. So where the hell's the island?"

"It looks like it's, um, gone."

"And where'd it go, then?"

"I dunno. Sank, I guess?"

Both men stared out to sea, as if their scrutiny could somehow magically make the island reappear. The _Elizabeth_ bobbed in the waves.

Desmond grumbled, "Looks like they let her run aground. She doesn't seem to be anchored."

Around the Elizabeth's seaward side, where the waters were deeper, two fins moved in a lazy criss-cross. Neither man had to say anything, but the word rested on both their lips. Sharks.

"Got any cuts on you, brother?" Desmond asked.

"Cuts? We got to swim out in that? Because that's totally crazy."

"Unless you can sprout wings and fly, I only know one way. Look, sharks are cowards. I've been in the water with them before. You just can't be afraid of them. They can smell fear."

"Dude, that's dogs, not sharks."

"All right, then. I'll bring us in to her as close as I can. You stay on the canoe and hold it steady. When I get aboard the _Elizabeth_, I'll toss you a tow rope. But you'll still have to get in the water."

"Crap."

"If you don't thrash about too much, most times they'll leave you alone. If one gets too near or even bumps you, just give it a good smack across the chops."

"Right," Hugo said, his confidence suddenly flagging. Looking out to sea, he said under his breath, "Hey, sharks, give us a break, all right?"

Desmond just shrugged, then removed his shoes. He slipped into the choppy surf as quietly as possible, then headed for the _Elizabeth_ with short, controlled strokes. In no time he reached the yacht. He climbed hand-over-hand up the dangling tow-rope, then tossed it to Hugo.

Hugo missed the rope on the first try. On the second, it practically knocked him over, being long and heavy with water. He grabbed it and looped it around a ring at the front of the canoe, hoping his knot would hold.

"Is she secured? Well, come on, then." Desmond tossed the rope ladder over the side and waved Hugo on.

Hugo unlaced his boots, staring over at the sharks swimming about fifty feet from the Elizabeth. The rough waters looked dark and deep. If he waited any longer, he'd lose his nerve altogether. So out he tumbled, making a loud splash.

One good thing about being as fat as he was, he bobbed up buoyant as a cork. The light surf pushed him around a bit, but he stroked and kicked against it, amazed that he moved forward at all. A wave smacked him in the face, leaving him gasping. Then he rose atop the next wave as it peaked.

With a few strong pulls he managed to get close to the _Elizabeth_. He stopped swimming, not wanting to crash into her hull, and almost forgot to close his mouth when another swell broke over his head. Once more Hugo bobbed up, managing to grab hold of the ladder. It sagged under his weight but held. Nor was it as hard to pull himself up as he thought.

As Hugo stood dripping on the deck, Desmond threw him a damp towel. "Welcome aboard, brother."

He tossed the smelly towel back to Desmond. "What'd you do, wrap fish with this? I'm not using it on my hair."

Desmond grabbed one of Hugo's locks and tossed it about, teasing. "Sorry we don't have full beautician services on board. This is the bargain-rate tour." Then Desmond scratched his head. "I don't get it. Sawyer took her over to Hydra, you say? He never dropped anchor, it looks like. So what I don't get is, why didn't she just wash out to sea? Or crash into these rocks, or get sucked right into a sandbar? I mean, anything big enough to sink Hydra Island-"

"Maybe something kind of pushed her to shore?"

"And what would do that, brother?"

"Umm, a storm, maybe?"

"Which explains why the _Elizabeth_ wasn't just dashed to driftwood on those rocks there."

"You're the sailor, not me." Hugo leaned over the starboard side, where the sharks still made their slow circles. _Thanks, guys_, he thought.

"And further, what's holding her here? She can't be stuck in a sandbar, or she wouldn't bob about like this."

"Maybe you could just, like, steer her out, see how that goes?"

"There's virtually no petrol left. Guess the Others who stole her never resupplied her. I doubt she'll start."

"Come on, Desmond, have a little faith. Just give it a shot."

After a few coughs, the motor rumbled to life. Desmond laughed and slapped his forehead, then gave Hugo's arm a small punch, grinning wide enough to split his face. "Don't know how long that will last, but at least there's a good tail wind coming up."

"I just wish I had my boots," Hugo said.

"You want to swim back to the outrigger and get them? Didn't think so. Anyway, it's better to feel her deck beneath your feet. Would you wear shoes with a woman in bed?"

Hugo turned away, flushed. To cover his embarrassment, he studied the wide blue space where Hydra Island used to be.

As Desmond prepared to raise the main sail, he said, "You ever sail a boat, brother? No? It's not hard. You're gonna love it."

(_continued_)


	9. In the Shadow of the Statue

**Chapter 9: In the Shadow of the Statue**

As soon as Hugo and Desmond set out for Hydra Island, Ben left the beach camp. He followed the rocky western shore for awhile, then picked up the old boar trail which led to the top of the great ridge which divided the Island right down the center into western and eastern regions. As Ben climbed out of the forest, the boar-trail became a foot-path, worn firm by Jacob's people over the long years.

Following it upwards, Ben reached a high ridge-crest, where he stopped to gaze out over the entire western part of the Island. Warm winds ruffled his hair as mid-morning sun blazed across the open land.

The last part of his trek was mostly downhill. He side-winded along the sharp face of a small broken ridge and headed towards the beach. There was no sound except for the occasional crunch of tiny pebbles beneath his feet, and the faint slap of the sea against the tree-lined shore.

He pushed through foliage and the sea opened up to him like a welcome embrace. Ben searched up and down the seashore for gear or any other remnants of Ilana's team, but nothing remained except a wooden outrigger canoe. Other than that, it was as if Jacob's stealth warriors hadn't been here at all.

The canoe would come in useful, so Ben dragged it up past the tide-line and covered it with leafy branches. Following the shoreline's northward curve, he soon came to a giant stone foot, the massive and broken remains of an enormous statue. He crept around the great, squat form, until he came to a rectangular opening cut into the stone.

At least the door was open. Had it been closed, he wouldn't have had the strength to move it. The day before yesterday Ben had stood, amazed, as the man whom he still thought of as John Locke gave it barely a push, and it slid back with little effort. In retrospect, it made sense. Perhaps to open the god's chamber, you had to be a god yourself.

Taking a deep breath, Ben entered the stone aperture and headed down a dark, narrow corridor lit only by small slivers of sunlight at either end.

In the middle of the corridor, light behind him, light before him, in that in-between space surrounded by darkness, Ben felt no fear. Instead, a great clarity seized him, the kind you get when you wake at three in the morning, and suddenly the solution to the intractable problem which has tormented you for days arranges itself right before your eyes.

Jacob must have gone mad at the end, there. He just wanted to die. And he, Ben, wasn't only an element in the monster's loophole. He was one in Jacob's as well.

The three bodies which the smoke monster had killed were right where the monster had left them, and there was no smell of death. Ben hadn't expected any.

Well, might as well get started with what he had come to do. He lugged the three dead men to the fire pit and pushed them in, one after the other. This one, what was his name? Bram? He was almost as big as Hugo, but with more muscle. And this other one had to be six and a half feet tall, so that Ben had to fold his legs into a kind of crouch. Ilana certainly didn't travel with lightweights.

Sweat poured from Ben's face as he piled the bodies into the center of the fire ring. Early afternoon sun poured through the hole in the stone ceiling and burned the back of his neck.

He would have to gather wood, a lot of it. Suddenly a great weariness seized Ben. What had he gotten himself in for? It would take all day and half the night to gather enough wood to make work of this crew. Maybe he should drag them down to the beach and bury them above the tide-line. Not that that would be any easier.

Against the far wall stood a broken loom with a partially-strung warp on it: Jacob's latest work, interrupted forever. In its rage the smoke creature had flung one of the men against the loom, dashing it to splinters. He might as well use this for kindling, as the loom was obviously broken beyond repair. So he gathered the whole mess in his arms and tossed it into the fire pit too.

All at once, without tinder or anything to start the fire, flames flared up, high enough to leap through the skylight.

"What the hell?" Ben cried out. The sunlight pouring through the aperture got even brighter, and Ben could no longer look directly at it. As he stepped back, the corpses began to smoke. Hot noon-day sun flooded the whole room, as the aperture focused light like a gigantic magnifying glass. The walls of Jacob's room glowed white, as if lit by a dozen floodlights.

Ben fled to the shadows along the edges of the wide room and hid behind a pillar, while the smell of burning human meat filled the air. In the farthest corner he cowered in the shade of a thick stone pillar, away from the heat and light. Behind him, fat crackled and hissed, and it smelled like hell's own barbecue in there.

In the corner, another tapestry woven in bright red rested on the floor. Dusty foot-marks covered it, as if it had been thrown down and casually walked over.

Ben bent down for a closer look, then drew back with an involuntary shudder. This one wasn't so jubilant as Jacob's stunning white composition. In fact, this tapestry was downright gruesome, and not just because of its blood-red backdrop. Greek capital letters screamed of war. Slaves were led away in chains, their ribs delineated by stark, starving white. Warships ferried prisoners, perhaps nobles taken as hostage.

Alex had been such a hostage, hadn't she?

The very center, though, was the worst. There in the middle stood a multi-armed creature with shish-kabobed soldiers, dead meat on spears. Others lay piled at its feet. The creature loomed over the slain like an androgynous Kali, mother-father of death. While Ben had no doubt that the armies fully deserved what they got, it was clear that this story, at least, contained no heroes.

Hot, burning white light still filled the chamber, but Ben shivered with cold. What was this tapestry about, really? Why would Jacob make this obscenity, and why had he kept it on the ground just to tread on it? Just like the white tapestry, this one had a corner cut out of it as well.

Shielding his eyes, Ben sidled across the room to another dark corner. On a chair rested a knife, the very one which the dark creature in Locke's form had handed to Ben, the one Ben had used to kill a god. Tossed on the floor near it lay a crumpled red scrap, the blood stains indistinguishable from the dark woven threads. So that was where the corner of red fabric had gone.

Ben picked up the knife and examined the blade. As he tested its weight in his hand, once more he felt how effortlessly it had slid between Jacob's ribs. How easily Jacob had succumbed, lying relaxed and unresistant in Ben's arms like a lover. _Le petit mort_, the little death. That's what French called the moment of complete surrender.

Then again, maybe the dead could lie as easily as the living. Or perhaps they carried their deceptions and delusions with them into the afterlife. Miles had said that Jacob didn't want to die, but to Ben, Jacob hadn't acted like someone desperate to save his own life. Just because Jacob wanted to be wrong about Ben, didn't rule out the possibility that Jacob had finally given up.

How old had Jacob been when he died, anyway?

Hurley wanted to shed that nickname as he had shed so much of his former life. Ben suspected that you could drop a nuclear bomb on the Island, but as long as that big stone _lingam_ stayed planted in the Island's _yoni_, Hugo wouldn't die. The Island might vaporize and leave Hugo floating in the ocean to wash up on some other shore. But as long as the waters of the Island's Heart flowed over the stone of life, neither falling trees nor lava, neither bullets nor the power of the sun itself would damage the Island's Protector.

But Jacob had died, that was a known fact. So would any knife work if wielded by a determined hand and plunged into a willing heart, or must it be this one in particular, now that it had been wetted with Jacob's blood? Ben once again weighed it back and forth, brooding.

Who had more power, the god, or the one who could kill the god?

Bright and hot as an arc lamp, the flames continued to roar, consuming the bodies at a frightening rate. Ben was just about to stow the knife in his pack when old stories came back to him. Axes with minds of their own cut off the woodsman's limbs instead of the tree's. Arrows which when let fly returned to pierce the archer to the heart. Quickly, before he could change his mind, Ben turned his face away from the bright, relentless heat and tossed the knife into the fire.

He went back to pick up the red-woven horror, thinking to consign it to the flames as well, but then stayed his hand. Something compelling called to him from it. _You would take the fair and not the foul?_ _Take the sweet, but not the bitter? Pick him, and not me? It was always him, wasn't it? What about me?_

"What about you?" Ben said to it under his breath.

But the red rug just lay there, a diagnosis which could no longer be denied. The thing was an abomination, but it told a story. Maybe time would somehow provide the interpreter to unlock the tale.

The fire slowly burned itself out. Thick grayish ash dusted the fire pit, all that remained of the men who had followed Jacob to their deaths.

Ben trembled a little in the cooling and darkening room. Fresh, light breezes blew over and around him, taking with them the greasy, burning smell. He looked around for some kind of container, and soon found a red clay amphora with wide, high handles. Into it he shoveled the men's ashes, what little were left. The men had burned down to virtually nothing, and the three of them barely filled the amphora. There were no bone fragments, no dental fillings. Nor was there any trace of the knife, not a single sliver of metal.

Time to leave this place to the dust and to the dead.

Ben struggled out the door, weighed down with his own pack and the amphora full of ash. He dragged the clay jar to the shoreline, poured its contents into the surf, and rinsed out the amphora with sea water. As the ash floated away, he said, "Rest in peace, you poor bastards."

The now-empty amphora was large and awkward, so Ben headed back to the statue to return it to Jacob's rooms. Right outside the opening, dread washed over him. If he did go back inside, that great blank stone door would close and entomb him. He set the jar down by a large, flat stone near the entrance, then couldn't resist peering into the blackness one last time.

The door started to move with a low scraping sound, all on its own. Ben jumped back, heart pounding. God help him if a piece of his clothing had gotten caught in that inexorable motion. The huge block of stone ground on, massive as some planet making its orbit. Finally it came to rest in its original closed position.

Ben was very glad that it hadn't done that when he was inside.

He took a few steps backward, keeping his eye on Jacob's door as if it held more surprises for him. Hoisting his pack, he then clambered up to the back of the giant foot. Even in its broken state, the foot still cast a deep, dark shadow. Into it Ben crept, out of the reach of the bright afternoon sun.

When intact, the statue must have been seventy, eighty feet tall. Now that Ben got a better look, it was clear that the statue's placement wasn't random. It had been positioned midpoint in latitude across the whole Island, at the place where north and south met. Then, right before sunset, the statue's vast shadow would have stretched out over the jungle to the base of the distant cliffs, enfolding the forest in its sheltering mantle of dark green.

What lies in the shadow of the statue? At the close of day, the Island itself, laid out like a woman waiting for her lover to come to bed. The protector, and the protected. All of them lay in the statue's shadow, or would have, if something hadn't broken it.

Ben adjusted his gear, walking in the statue's cover as long as he could. If he made good time, he could reach the Tempest Station in little over an hour. Obviously Daniel Faraday had managed to short-circuit the gas-dispersal system, or no one would be here to speculate about it. But there were other auxiliaries, back-ups, duplicate reservoirs, and Ben wanted to make sure that everything was disabled, completely.

Ironic, though, how he was exchanging one charnel house for another. As Ben walked uphill, away from the sea, he wondered if there was anyplace on this Island where he had not done murder.

* * *

><p>The climb up to the Tempest was quicker than Ben remembered, but steeper, too. Panting, he stopped halfway up a bare, windswept hill and searched about for the station's slab-like bunker door. It wasn't until he'd circled the plateau a few times that he realized the tumbled boulders halfway up the mountain were actually the station's shattered remains. A rockfall had obscured the door entirely. Ben couldn't find any signs of blast, so Juliet or Faraday must not have blown it up.<p>

No doubt the earthquakes had buried the Tempest under hundreds of thousands of tons of rock. It was gone, utterly, completely. First the mess in Jacob's rooms, then this. Two down, one to go, third time's a charm. Although the last task was the one he was least looking forward to.

Ben felt more alone than he could remember, even more so than when he was a boy.

That was one kind of alone, when a young boy lived in a colony which preached love, peace, and harmony, but looked the other way when confronted with the bruises, the cracked eye-glasses, the shouts which rang through the thin walls of Roger Linus's Barracks house.

Then there was this kind of alone, on a hot tropical afternoon miles away from any other human being, with only the high winds whistling across the mountain for company. It wasn't that Ben feared the remote places of the Island. For the first time in his adult life, the Island seemed alien to him. He would have to get to know it all over again. Not its geography, which he knew as well as the contours of his own face. But Ben had thought of the Island as his, as a woman whom he possessed, who had now gone over to some other man.

Ah, no matter. There was nothing to be done here. He was about to turn and hike back down the cliff when a voice-like rustling arose from behind him. He heard soft breathing, and dared not turn around.

"You can't get in there anymore," a sweet, young voice said.

Ben said nothing, trembling hard, wishing the mountain had buried him as well as the Tempest Station.

The voice gave a little sigh. "Ben, why won't you look at me?"

It couldn't be. He whirled around, an expression of terror on his face. "Annie?"

She wore a simple light blue shift, and her long pale hair glittered golden in the sunlight. Her bare toes left no marks in the short grass as she walked towards him. Annie stopped just out of arm's reach and said in a conversational tone, "You got old."

"You didn't," Ben said, trying to keep the tremor out of his voice. "You're still in your twenties."

She just smiled, and through her body Ben could see high, sun-bleached grass.

"I'm so old," he said, lost and pointless.

She drew her thin shoulders up, as if she'd rehearsed a speech for some time and was now ready to deliver it. "I just came to tell you that things are going to be all right."

"Annie, I'm so sorry. For all of it."

"It wasn't your fault. It wasn't just us. Nobody could have babies. But I forgive you, if that helps." Message delivered, she turned as if to go.

"Please, wait."

"I can't. Do you still have my doll?"

Mutely he nodded, but dug around in his pack to make sure. He grasped the small wooden figure, hard. It was a child's carving, the image of a little girl. Annie had made one of herself and one of him, when Ben had just turned nine and she was a year younger. It was his birthday present, the only one he got that year.

On that bare hillside, Ben said to the ghostly figure, "I do have it. I always have." Then, as an afterthought, "We buried mine with you. You and the baby."

"I know. Hold onto yours, though." She turned to go, this time for good.

"Wait!" he called out, making as if to follow after her.

Now the warning in her voice rang out, loud and clear. "Ben, no. You're safe now on the Island. The big man, he'll keep you safe. But you can't chase after me." And it was true. In the shadows where the harsh sunlight didn't reach, unseen things stirred. Something glimmered, perhaps an eye or a horn, maybe even a long glittering tooth.

As Annie walked towards the forest, she didn't disappear, but instead just faded. By the time she reached the outskirts of the jungle, where eyes gleamed and occasionally blinked, she disappeared altogether. Although she was gone, her soft "Good-bye, Ben," drifted towards him across the grass.

Blazing afternoon sunlight tinged the clouds a light peach, reddening them to dark orange at the edges. Whatever was in the underbrush went away, and the trees ceased their soft whispers.

Ben stood there, bereft. He had killed the only people he had ever loved. Juliet's death was sealed from the moment she had first come into his sights, when Ethan and Richard had showed him the stack of her publications, including a photograph of her beautiful smile. That disaster he couldn't lay at the feet of the fates.

His mother and Annie, though, no one could blame him for that: not his father, not Richard Alpert. It didn't matter, though. Dead was dead.

Ben fell to his knees and wept.

* * *

><p>When Ben finally made it back down to shoreline, the late afternoon tide was coming in fast, so quickly that the outrigger had drifted a little. A few moments later, and it would have washed out to sea. At least he didn't have to drag the canoe back down to the shoreline.<p>

Ben paddled hard southwards, with the Island's dark and brooding coast to his left, under the fierce red eye of a sun which glowered like judgment itself.

He rounded the jagged shoreline on his journey's last leg. Tiny campfire-flickers stood out along the beach like golden gems against a black velvet setting, calling to mind hot tea and warm food, people who shifted to one side so that you could scoot yourself in closer to the blaze. You could bear the darkness at your back if a welcoming fire warmed your front.

The surf pushed him into the shoreline of the only home he had right now.

"Hello!" Ben shouted out, not wanting to come upon them unawares. It didn't matter, because people were running towards him anyway. At the head of the pack swayed Hugo, kicking up sand as he went. Ben had barely managed to drag the outrigger up past the tide-line when a tsunami of flesh slammed into him, picked him up, and twirled him around like a rag doll.

After that breath-robbing, exhilarating hug, Hugo practically dropped Ben on the sand. "We got back hours ago, man. I wanted to go out looking for you but Desmondo here said no, to wait till tomorrow."

Bernard said, "Told you he'd show up for supper."

"As you can see, I'm fine," said Ben.

"See, no need for worry," Desmond said to Hugo.

Bernard pointed to the _Elizabeth,_ glinting in the sunset like a small toy. "See the beautiful ship they brought back?"

Rose said, "Perfect timing, Ben. Instead of my cooking tonight, you get to enjoy Bernard's."

As they dug into fish stew with savory broth, Desmond started. "Biggest news first, I guess. I don't think we have to worry much about Hydra Island, as there isn't one any longer. It's gone."

"Gone?" Ben said, face turning pale. "What do you mean, it's gone?"

"Sunk, bro," said Hugo. "Or blown up. We couldn't tell. But there's just a big wide piece of ocean where it used to be. And sharks. Lotta sharks."

"I wonder if any of Widmore's people got off first," said Ben.

Rose said in a nervous voice, "I guess we'll find out."

"Half my life was on that island," Ben mused.

"What, you mean the room with the big machine, where they strapped me and zapped me?" Desmond said with an edge to his voice.

Hugo said, "Why were all those cages there, Ben?"

Ben swallowed hard. "Research. Dharma started it, and we picked it up."

"Dharma didn't start it," Desmond broke in. "That whole compound was far older than the Dharma Initiative. Early Cold War era, I'd say, back in the days of atomic testing in the Pacific. My hunch is that the cages were used for radiation experiments."

"On animals?" Hugo said. Vincent had come up to beg for scraps, and Hugo reached over to give him a pat.

"I don't know, brother," Desmond said, looking over at Ben. "All I know is, it was a place of horrors."

"What else did they do there?" Bernard asked Ben. "Besides zapping Desmond, I mean."

"Bernard, leave it be," Rose said. "It's gone now. And good riddance." She turned to Hugo. "So you didn't see anybody else up there? No people?"

"Nada, zip," Hugo said. "There was an awesome beach, though, with lots of shade trees, fresh water, and everything. If anybody got off, that's where they'd camp. But there wasn't a sign of a single fire except ours. Not a footprint on the beach. I don't think anybody's been there."

"Well, I'm just glad you all got back OK," Rose said.

"We stopped at the lighthouse, too," Hugo added.

Ben gaped, eyes wide. "A lighthouse? What kind of lighthouse?"

"I dunno, a brick one? Jacob sent me and Jack there last week. Jacob gave me some numbers to program into it."

Bernard looked puzzled. "Program? What was it, some kind of computer?"

"Maybe," Hugo said. "An old-fashioned kind, all made of brass and mirrors and gears. Guess Jacob believed in no school like the old school. When you turned the brass wheel to the right numbers, you could see stuff in the mirrors. Like our houses. The ones back home, I mean. That freaked Jack out, man. He just kind of busted everything up and then went off to stare out at the ocean. Never did figure out what that was about. It was like in _Tommy_. He smashed those mirrors to pieces."

"'Tommy?'" Ben asked, confused. "Who?"

"Yeah, The Who," Hugo answered.

"Who's on first?" Bernard said with a small grin.

Rose said, "Oh, be quiet and let the man talk."

"Then after that, Jack got all depressed. Jacob snuck up on me and said it wasn't important anyway." Hugo fell quiet for a second, as if weighted by Jacob's responsibility. "Man, I hope I don't get like that."

"Like what?" said Bernard.

"You know, all Yoda-like. Where nobody knows what I'm talking about."

Rose patted Hugo's arm. "I don't think you will, sweetie. From what we've heard, Jacob was playing a lot of games, pushing people around like pawns on the chessboard."

Hugo said, "Well, I did have to lie to Jack once in awhile, to get him to do stuff Jacob wanted him to."

Ever since the lighthouse was mentioned, cold anxiety had clotted in Ben's stomach. "I thought I was doing what Jacob wanted, too. Look how well that turned out for me."

"It didn't turn out too well for Jacob, either," Hugo said in a flat voice. "By the time I talked to him here on the Island, he was kinda dead."

Everyone else was very quiet now, as the two men locked eyes. Ben looked away first, with a stricken face.

Hugo said, "Hey, we all know what happened. It's over. Don't worry, dude. I don't think he held it against you."

Desmond fixed Ben with a hard glance. "It wouldn't be the first time in the history of the world, somebody killed someone because they thought God wanted them to. But it's the dawn of a new day, brother."

"Amen," said Rose. "So, Ben, we haven't heard your story."

Ben swallowed, not wanting to speak at first, even though the faces around the fire which waited, quiet, were friendly now. Or if not friendly, at least open. No one was tying him up or punching him out. He still had to remind himself that they were all on the same side. Still, he braced himself for blows. "I walked up to the remains of the statue, up on the west coast. I laid to rest the men that the Monster killed." He didn't mention the knife or the tapestries. "Then I went to the Dharma station called the Tempest, just to make sure everything up there was completely inactivated."

Hugo broke in, "Dude, that was the place full of poison gas, right?"

"What?" Rose said, staring at Ben. "What the hell were you people doing here?"

Ben held his face perfectly composed, the fruit of years of practice. "Well, Rose, you'll be glad to know that like Hydra Island, the Tempest was gone, too. Half a mountain fell on it, it looked like."

"Well, thank God for small miracles."

"So, that's it?" Hugo said.

"Yes, Hugo, that's it. Ilana's people left an outrigger, so I helped myself and paddled straight back here."

"And you didn't see nobody or nothing."

"Not a soul. If there had been someone following me, or someone around, believe me, I'd know."

Hugo looked at him crosswise, and Ben's heart started to pound. It was obvious that Hugo didn't believe him, but all Hugo said was, "Well, Kate caught your people out in the woods more than once."

Bernard tried to change the subject. "What do you think should happen now, Hugo?"

"I told Desmond that we'd get him on his way home. But after that, I dunno. Ben is the one who knows the Island." Hugo waited until Ben realized he was being asked to speak.

Rose jumped in, still angry. "I should say he does. My God. Electrocution chambers. Poison gas. Animals in radiation experiments. Sounds like we need to grab a mop and broom and sweep this place clean."

"Rose, just let the man talk," Bernard said.

Ben cleared his throat. It was a very good thing she didn't know about Room 23. Maybe the sinking of Hydra Island wasn't such a catastrophe after all. "As I see it, there are a couple of things. We don't know who's still alive. There could be some of my people up in the jungle by the Temple." He stopped short, nodding to Hugo, "I mean, your people. They're your people now. They could have gone to the camp near the old Pala Ferry dock."

"Yeah, I remember that place. Fun times." Hugo's tone said the opposite.

"Sorry," Ben said, lowering his head before going on. "Some might have even gone back to the Barracks." He felt that he had to appeal to Hugo for permission. "I know our people are now your people. But some of them, we go back a long time. I feel responsible."

Hugo stood up, and at once everyone had a sense of how large he was. His big body blocked out the setting sun, so that they all sat in his shadow. He flung his arms open wide and in a loud voice said to Ben, "It's not my people or your people, good or bad ones, candidates or whatever. It's Just. Plain. People. So I'm supposed to protect this Island, right? Well, the people who are on it, they're part of the Island too."

"Some of them might not know that the war is over," Bernard said.

"Then it's gonna be our job to find them and tell them that it is," Hugo rejoined.

"That's a good point," Bernard said. "Other than us, who even knows that there's a new protector?"

Turning to Rose and Bernard, Hugo said, "Guys, I got an idea. Let's all go up to the Other's village, OK? There's a dock up by the boathouse. Desmond can sail the _Elizabeth_ right up to it. And he could use help to get ready. Plus, there might be people up there."

"That's what we're afraid of," Rose said.

Hugo's appeal won Bernard over. "He's right, Rose. Look, we've had our vacation. I admit, there were reasons to hide out. But things are different now, can't you feel it? Look at all the times we've had to trust. You know I don't believe in God, but I am the first to admit that all that's happened to us, well, could it all have been blind chance? You haven't been sick a day since we got here over three years ago. I talked to your doctors, remember? They gave you six months, maybe, and not six great ones, either. Yet here you are. After the tail section crashed, I thought I would never see you again. We were apart for almost two months, and yet I came back."

Rose's eyes glittered, but she didn't cry. "Yes, honey, you did."

Bernard went on, "Then the sky turned purple, but we didn't die. And that's just a few of the crazy things, like everybody coming back, and Jack's body. So I think we should go up to the Barracks. I know I'm no doctor, but from what I've heard, there's an infirmary up there, and equipment, and possibly even books. I could learn. And there might be people who need my help. We can do this, Rose. The Island has given us a lot. Let's give some back."

Rose's eyes shone openly with tears now. "It's a long way," she said faintly.

"Hey," Hugo said. "If we're lucky, maybe we can cop a ride."

Rose wiped her eyes. "What, you got a taxi service?"

Bernard gave a low whistle. "Hugo's blue tank."

"I heard about that tank from Bernard. You were quite the hero."

As Hugo turned away, blushing, Ben relaxed inside. He was intensely curious about the lighthouse, but getting up to the Barracks was more important. Maybe this was going to work out after all.

As Hugo turned to go, he stepped out of the sun's light and looked like himself again, ungainly, a bit awkward. With a smile he said to everyone, "I'm gonna fix up my tent now. I'll check out the van in the morning. And this time I get to sleep in."

(_continued_)

**(A/N: I goofed on Annie's age at death, so corrected it.)**


	10. Everybody Loves Miles

**Chapter 10: Everybody Loves Miles**

After lunch the next day, Officer Nariki bicycled up to the Bikenibeu Lodge. Under his arm he carried some old Australian newspapers of a few weeks' vintage.

"Nei Claire might like to see them. They're pretty new," he said as he looked around the hotel's patio without hope. No one but Frank, Richard, and Sawyer were out and about.

"I'll give them to her," Sawyer said with a grin. "Me being her fiance and all."

Frank rolled his eyes, and quickly asked the crestfallen policeman if he happened to have a pack of playing cards which they might have. "Just to pass the time, you understand."

Much to Sawyer's surprise, Nariki took from his pocket a greasy, dirty set of cards worn almost thin from thousands, if not tens of thousands of games, and handed them to Frank.

"It is all right," Nariki said. "We have another pack at the station. Not in such good shape, but they will do." Then he looked around again. "Where's Nei Claire and Nei Kate? They out back or something?"

Sawyer shot a glare over to Frank which said, _Look what you started_. To Nariki Sawyer growled, "Probably taking a siesta. It's damned hot enough." Then an inspiration seized Sawyer, and in a lighter, friendlier tone he said, "You maybe wanna play a few rounds?"

"Sure," Nariki answered, breaking once more into that broad, sunny smile.

"You in, Rickey?" Frank asked.

Richard protested at first, but soon enough he and Sawyer, Frank and Nariki squatted on pandamus mats in the shade of the concrete breezeway between the two halves of the motel, as Sawyer dealt out cards for twenty-one.

Nariki might have looked young, gentle, and foolish, but his card-counting abilities were better than Sawyer expected. Soon Sawyer was down to his last tiny sample bottle of shampoo, cadged from Kate the day before. Finally, bluffing his way through a desperate six and queen of hearts, Sawyer managed to get Nariki to bust.

"OK, I'm out. What do you want?" For Nariki had no more money than they did, and had wagered for a favor.

"A couple suitcases from the plane." Sawyer winced inside, glad he couldn't hear Kate's teasing voice telling him he should have thought of that earlier and grabbed one when the getting was good, like she had. "Any two, don't matter whose they were. I figure any one of 'em got stuff we could use."

Nariki nodded knowingly. "Mr. Biribo and I, we'll go later this afternoon. Maybe there will be something left. I'll look for something nice for the ladies, too."

Sawyer was about to say something, when Frank jabbed him, hard. After Nariki left, Sawyer complained, "What the hell was that about, Burt?"

"The less that's on that plane, the better it's going to go for us. You really want Ajira or better yet, the Feds, to find all those wires Widmore ran for the C-4?" Frank gave a chuckle. "I'll bet by the time the team from Ajira gets here to pick her up, she'll have been stripped bare. There won't be a seat cushion left. Or maybe even a seat."

He gestured to Sawyer and pointed across the road, where a small pink cinder-block house sported a three-abreast row of airplane seats in its tiny front yard. The seat cushions looked too fresh and unfaded to have been there for very long.

"They share things here," Frank said. "The big men get their cut, and then everything else gets parceled out."

Richard said, "Well, what they really need to share with us is a phone."

"I think we're in a no-coverage zone," Sawyer remarked.

"I mean, a sat-phone. We've really got to get our hands on a phone. Before it's too late."

"Before what's too late?" said Frank.

"Before whoever's coming for us from Suva gets off the ground. There are some people I really need to talk to, the sooner the better." Richard waved his hand around the concrete patio, and they all took in the tin shade-roof overhead, the chain-link gate still swinging wide open, because Officer Nariki hadn't bothered to close it.

A van full of children rumbled past, probably taking them home from school, although it was obvious that most of the local children were completely unburdened by schoolrooms. A few boys walked by, their lava-lavas wrapped around their thin waists, the cloth itself cut from old t-shirts. They waved and smiled, pointing at the visitors. One boy's lava-lava read in bright white letters against a dark blue background, "Adelaide United."

Sawyer got Richard's point at once. In a place where even an old pack of playing cards was a phenomenal gift, what could you get with something really valuable? "Where the hell is Miles?"

"Hopefully back inside the room, unless he decided to wander off," Richard said.

"Goddamn, he better not have," said Sawyer. The three men converged on Miles, who lay sprawled out on the sofa, reading a paperback Western which looked to be of World War II vintage.

"You want me to do what?" Miles said, incredulous, after Sawyer had explained it to him. "No way. You know what I had to go through to get those diamonds? How bad that grave smelled?"

"Look, Miles," Frank said in the kind of helpful, authoritative tone which airline pilots adopt to coax reluctant passengers out of burning plane wreckage. "They know you have those diamonds. And why they didn't just confiscate them, I'll never understand, but-"

Richard interrupted, "As you said before, Frank, the I-Kiribati are good people. They're not going to just take Miles's diamonds away from him."

"That's right," said Sawyer. "The game is to trade for them."

Frank added, "I hate to be the one to break it to you, Miles, but when the State Department and whoever the hell else they bring with them gets here, you think you're going to be able to hang on to those diamonds?"

All at once, the thumping fan crawled to a halt, and the lights went out.

"What the hell?" Miles said.

"Blackouts," Frank answered. "They have them around here all the time."

"Gonna get hot as hell in here in about ten minutes," Sawyer remarked. "So, Miles, you might as well haul ass out to the breezeway for some more cards. I don't want you doing any betting, though. You're just gonna sit there, watch, and keep your mouth shut till I need you."

"Sure, boss," Miles answered.

Sawyer just sighed.

* * *

><p>It was surprisingly easy to arrange another card game, although Sawyer informed everyone who would listen that he sure wasn't going to play any more damned blackjack, at least not without a genuine Las Vegas card-dealing machine with eight decks. Officer Nariki might have snookered him once, but that was the only chance he was going to get.<p>

Police Chief Biribo listened to Sawyer's complaints with good humor. He was as avid a gambler as his protégé, and better yet, he brought beer. Lots of beer, a whole cooler's worth, and cold, too.

"About the only thing on this damn atoll that is," Sawyer grumbled to Kate, who stood on the sidelines with Claire.

Nariki had made good on his promise to bring "something nice for the ladies:" a garish jeweled hand-mirror for Kate and a fine peach silk shirt for Claire, obviously raided from whatever remained on Ajira 316. Just as he was about to give them out, Sawyer grimaced at him and held out his hand.

It was quite courageous, actually, Claire thought, because as friendly as the I-Kiribati were, she and Kate were technically prisoners in a foreign country, and these were the police after all.

"What part about Nei Claire being my fiancée don't you get? No one gives her gifts but me. Right, Miles?" Sawyer looked over to Miles for help.

Miles shrugged, indifferent. "Just keeping my mouth shut, boss, like you said."

Nariki wasn't one to miss an opportunity. Pointing to Kate, he said, "So, look, Mr. Miles, if you don't want her-"

Kate flushed red and livid. Claire could feel her tightly coiled anger, how she was ready to spring to her feet, but Sawyer stood up first. He was almost equal in height to the tall Micronesian man, but Nariki was considerably wider. Nonetheless, Sawyer said, "Maybe I'll just take 'em both."

"James, if you think for a minute-" Kate said, unable to contain herself any longer.

Claire leaned in close to Kate and whispered, "Kate, don't you see? It's a ploy."

Chief Biribo decided to put an end to it. He forced his weight in between Nariki and Sawyer, then glared at both of them. In an affronted voice he said to Sawyer, "We aren't savages here, so don't talk to us that way. You can't have two women at one time in your own country. What makes you think you can do that in ours?" To Nariki he said, "Stop embarrassing yourself. Are we here to play cards, or what?"

Kate stared at Sawyer, frozen-faced. Ignoring her glare, Sawyer sidled over to her and Claire, saying, "You gals best stay in your room tonight. I gotta feeling it's gonna get drunken and a bit rough out here."

"What, you think I need a white knight to keep me safe from the menfolk?" Kate snapped.

"Come on, Kate," Claire said, tugging at her sleeve. She knew exactly what Sawyer meant.

As they crossed the courtyard, Mrs. Maleaua intercepted them. While her husband settled himself among the card players, she drew Kate and Claire aside. "The ship from Melbourne came in the day before you got here. Look what I picked up, some sticky buns. I've been saving them for something special, and this looks like it. I'll put on some tea and we'll have a little party of our own."

Claire said, "Hey, Kate, it'll be fun, like watching a game of footie from the sidelines."

Hidden in the shadows the women watched. Kate sat with her arms folded, still steaming.

The word must have gone out through the neighborhood that the strange foreigners from the mysterious plane were going to face off against the police chief of South Tarawa in a game of poker. Before long, a dozen men crowded around. The few women hung back, trying to keep the children off the motel patio. The kids pressed their faces up against the fence, and a few braver ones climbed over, when they thought the adults couldn't see them.

Before long, a few people brought their own coolers of beer, and the party slowly spread out onto the main road. It was early evening and there wasn't much traffic, but anytime one of the vans or pick-up trucks rumbled by, they parked for awhile mid-road while someone passed them a beer and a moment of conversation.

Claire and Kate brushed away the mosquitoes which descended in clouds, licked sticky bun sugar from their fingers, and drank cup after cup of tea as they strained to hear what Sawyer and Frank were wagering. Whatever it was, though, it kept them in the game, which went on long into the night. The beer flowed freely along with laughter, curses, and what sounded like long-standing arguments in I-Kiribati, a symphony of sounds finally loud enough to drown out the ever-pounding ocean.

Two men got into a fight, but Mr. Maleaua threw them out onto the center of the roadway, where a rusted old Datsun waited patiently for them to finish their wrestling and throwing punches, before driving on.

Only once did Claire and Kate give each other an alarmed look, debating whether or not to flee back into their room, although the light plywood door wouldn't have stopped anyone.

Some of the watching I-Kiribati men had set up their own wagers on the outcome of each hand of poker, and groaned loudly whenever their favorites lost a round. One of the men made a remark in I-Kiribati which must have been rude, because a few of the other men laughed, but not without a few wary glances over towards Sawyer. When Claire heard her name mentioned, Sawyer leaped to his feet, scattering the cards.

"I hear that again, I'll cut off your goddamned ear," Sawyer shouted. The man apparently understood English, because he clambered to his feet too, while his friends gave him room. Everyone was very quiet now, waiting to see what would happen. Both Kate and Claire looked over at Mrs. Maleaua, who sat with a blank expression, silent.

Then the young I-Kiribati man laughed and sat back down again. "Just playin' with you, bro."

Sawyer swung around, hair and sweat flying. "Anybody else got anything to say about it?" When nobody moved, he squatted back down, picked up the fallen cards and dealt out another hand. "Come on, then, let's play some damn cards."

Claire stood up. "I've had enough."

They went to their room, drew the only mosquito net around their bed and both climbed in, but neither one slept. Noise from the breezeway rumbled on throughout the night. At one point Miles raised his voice in protest, while Frank in blurred, drunken tones tried to get him to quiet down.

After awhile, the roar of the sea made itself heard over the noise of the few men who remained outside. Just as Kate and Claire were about to drift off to the drone of mosquitoes and the relentless ocean-hum, they heard a few light taps on their door.

Kate reached for the back waistband of her jeans, groping for the pistol that was no longer there. "What the hell? Wait here, Claire."

But it was only Richard and Frank, both wearing grins wide enough to split their faces in half. Richard said, "Sawyer did it. I swear to God that man is crazy, but he did it. He and Frank both. They got us our phone."

Claire lit the small kerosene lamp kept for blackouts. It really was like a kind of weird camping trip, Claire thought as the four of them crouched like children around a campfire, waiting to hear a story.

"That police chief, Biribo?" Frank said. "He's the cousin of the direct assistant to the Kiribati President. The cousin's a high muckety-muck, in other words, and he happened to stop by our little get-together."

"Just walking up and down, looking for a party to crash?" Kate said.

"You've never lived by the beach in Sydney," Claire remarked.

Frank went on, still grinning. "So the President's assistant's son is getting married. We thought Miles should do the kind and neighborly thing, and give him a little gift. Through Chief Biribo, of course."

Kate stared at Frank. "You bribed the chief of police?"

"Not me. Sawyer."

"Oh, for crying out loud," Kate said, rolling her eyes. "As if we're not in enough trouble already."

"Look, Kate, let them talk." Claire had to fight the rising desire to laugh. Not just at Kate, but at the whole situation. Kate's disgusted expression reminded her of so many evenings on their old beach after the crash, when the sun had set but it was too early to turn in. Kate and Sawyer would spar, Kate appearing annoyed but secretly delighted, the whole game going back and forth like tennis. Claire struggled for a few seconds to identify the feeling which bubbled up inside her, so seemingly at odd with their dire circumstances. Happiness, for one thing. For another, the irrational and completely crazy sense that somehow, in some way, this might actually all work out.

Richard said, "Another diamond went to Biribo's wife, too."

"Then there was the one for his girlfriend," added Frank. "But that one wasn't as nice."

It was clear that Richard was stone-cold sober, unlike Frank. "Then Sawyer suggested that Miles give one to Nariki too, for when he got married. Whenever that would be."

Frank added, "The sooner the better. What a horn-dog. He reminds me of me at that age."

"I don't believe I'm hearing this," Kate said.

"So you didn't wager for them?" Claire asked.

"Absolutely not," said Richard.

"Sawyer did win a couple pints of whiskey," Frank said. "But the diamonds, no. The poker game was long over by then. We were just finishing up the beer and getting better acquainted." From the slur in his voice, it was obvious they'd all gotten well-acquainted indeed.

"They didn't just promise the sat-phone, either," Richard said. "Biribo actually sent Nariki down to the station to get it."

"Plus the charger," Frank said helpfully.

"Nariki wasn't in much shape to get up on a bicycle. In fact, he fell off on the first try, and-"

"So, what now?" Kate interrupted.

Richard said, "Frank here is going to go sleep it off-"

"I'm not drunk," Frank said. "Perfectly fine. Never better."

"Frank, get lost," Richard said. "You were masterful earlier. But now it's time to let me do what I do best."

Frank grumbled, but headed for the door, giving everyone an imaginary tip of the hat on his way out.

"You sure you want us around?" Kate said. "It being a man's world and all."

Richard ignored the sally as he examined the sat-phone controls. "Thank God it's mostly charged. The power around here probably won't come on till mid-morning at the earliest. And every second counts."

"Why?" said Claire. "I mean, we're not going anywhere anytime soon, are we?"

"Maybe not," Richard said, still scrolling through menus on the phone's controls. "Somehow, Chief Biribo hasn't yet worked up the effort to call the US Embassy in Suva. He apologized, but I told him, 'No rush.' He looked distinctly relieved. Then Miles gave him another diamond."

It was clear that Kate wasn't exactly sympathetic. "Poor Miles. What does that leave him with, a whole handful?"

"I told him Mittelos would reimburse him, but that could never happen if I didn't get to make some calls. It settled him down a bit."

Claire peered out the louvered window which looked out over the back patio. From the next room over, she could hear Sawyer and Miles still arguing in drunken tones, although it sounded like they were starting to run out of steam.

Richard went on, "Biribo did manage to get ahold of Ajira headquarters in Mumbai, though. They're sending a team out later in the week to retrieve the plane."

A thoughtful expression crossed Kate's face. "Don't planes have, you know, these things that record everywhere they've been, all their maneuvers and such?"

"You mean the black box?"

Kate nodded. "Ajira's is going to be interesting."

Richard shook his head like a man who has had a very long evening, is tired to the bone, and still has a great deal of hard work ahead of him. "I can't worry about that now, Kate. One step at a time."

Claire returned to the circle of lamplight. Richard's sharp, carved profile reminded her of some hawk-like Renaissance man from a painting. It took no effort on her part to believe his story of being very old, and only subject to the slow tick of his life's clock now that Jacob had died. She reached over and laid her hand on his shoulder, trying to put as much warmth into the gesture as she could. "Thanks, Richard. For everything."

"Don't thank me yet. I'm still not sure how we're going to get out of here." He must have found the screen he was looking for, because he started to key in numbers.

"What time do you think it is in the USA?" Kate said to Claire in a whisper.

"I don't think it matters. My guess is that there's always someone awake at that switch."

Frank had left the door open. This brought in a refreshing breeze, but also swarms of mosquitoes, joined by their companions the moths and mayflies. Claire and Kate retreated to their bed, behind the netting, but no matter how tight it was tied down, a few mosquitoes always managed to squeeze in anyway. Claire slapped at a few, grumbling a bit that she would have to get used to mosquitoes all over again.

"We never did get bit on the Island, did we?" Kate said.

After awhile both of them stopped slapping and didn't bother, as they were more interested in listening to Richard.

Most of what Richard said didn't make a lot of sense. He gabbled on about some new operations manager who'd just taken over the Pacific division, and how Richard was confident he would work out splendidly. He spewed a string of numbers and technical jargon, then explained that the botanical team had gotten stranded by a storm on a small island near Tuvalu and needed extraction. Yes, so far the samples were intact, although he couldn't guarantee how long they'd last. Time was of the essence if they wanted to get these critical new extracts back to the home office's laboratories.

"It must be a code," Claire said to Kate.

"Richard said yesterday that Mittelos made pharmaceuticals," Kate whispered back. "In case anybody's spying, he's making it sound like they had an expedition."

Finally, Richard wrapped up. "No, I'll contact Norton myself. It's after 9 AM in LA, so he should be there." He fiddled with the phone some more, complaining under his breath. "Damn, only about fifteen minutes left." The charger sat at his feet, useless in the blackout.

The phone seemed to ring on the other end for a very long time, then someone finally picked up. "Didi, it's Richard... Yes, you too, sweetheart. Look, I need to speak with Dan right now. It's about the botanical team." There was a long pause, and Richard began to pace. "I understand that he's headed to court. But Didi, these are critical assets we're talking about. Critical and perishable. Yes, I'll hold."

Again, drawn-out silence filled the room. Richard's anxiety was contagious, and the two women put their arms around each other like children very much afraid of the dark. Eventually, after repeating much of the long, obtuse message, Richard said, "Dan, thanks. I haven't got much time. The situation here is delicate but still manageable. OK, here you go." Once again Richard gave forth a string of numbers, different this time.

There was a long silence on Richard's end as he listened, tense and intent. "OK, Dan. Our resources are limited and you won't be able to call me for another twelve hours or so... Great, I'll be looking forward to that. You're why we hired you, Dan... Tell Jerome thanks, too... Good-day to you as well."

Richard didn't so much set the phone down as let it fall with a thud onto the pandamus mat, where it rocked like a small box full of red, green, and blue jewels. Then, almost at once, the sat-phone battery ran out, leaving only the dim kerosene light. He reached to turn off the lamp, and in an abstracted tone said, "This is actually a good way to asphyxiate. We lost someone that way in a tent last year." Then he rolled onto his side, hands over his head.

"Richard, are you OK?" Claire said.

"Look, can I just lie here for awhile? It's quiet in your room. And clean. I just need some time, and a little peace."

"Are you sure that's a good idea?" Kate said. "I mean, considering how old-school they are around here."

"I'll tell them I'm a eunuch. I'll let Sawyer distract them. Please, I just want to sleep. When Dan calls tomorrow, I've got to be at my best. Please. You can kick me out first thing in the morning."

The two women nodded to one another. Claire said, "Take the sheet, Richard. It's too hot for it anyway."

"Sorry there's no mosquito netting for you," Kate added.

Claire's bites were starting to flare up into big itchy weals. As she scratched, she said to Kate, "Fat lot of good the net did me. I'm covered."

But even though the mosquitoes descended onto Richard in droves, he was already asleep.

(_continued_)


	11. What Happens in Molokai Stays in Molokai

**Chapter 11: What Happens in Moloka'i Stays in Moloka'i**

**(A/N: _OK, things just got "M" rated_.)**

Hugo had rebuilt his shelter, and was glad of it. He lay half-dreaming in that drifting space between waking life and the imaginary one, free from anxiety for the first time in a very long while. Morning sun filtered through the weather-worn tarp, casting cool and peaceful blueness over the interior. He rolled off his cot, ran his hands through his wild mane, then pulled the tarp back.

A fragrant odor of cooking filled the beach, and for a strange, disoriented instant he found himself back at the Barracks, when he had time-slipped to 1977 and cooked for the Dharma Initiative. But it wasn't the kind of cuisine he expected to find down here among the shellfish and coconuts, the screeching gulls and the occasional jellyfish which washed up on the shore.

Somebody was frying onions and sweet chilis, Poblanos maybe. There was more than a hint of garlic in there too, if he wasn't mistaken, and a few other scents he couldn't name.

Rose stirred something in the big frying pan which had come from the Swan Station. "It's a miracle this was still around. You people left this place a mess."

"Whatever that is, it smells great," Hugo said.

"Fried green tomatoes," she beamed.

Desmond rubbed the sleep out of his eyes as he approached, then peeked into the skillet. "What? You can eat those?"

"You can not only eat them, you can relish them." To Hugo she said, "Can you imagine, he's never had any?"

"More for me." The chilis made Hugo's eyes sting a little. "No cornmeal to fry them in, though."

"Oh, well, you can't have everything," Rose said.

Ben had taken over the morning duty of making tea, and he carried two metal cups. Handing one to Rose, he said, "There's cornmeal up at my house."

Rose looked confused. "Your house?"

"What you used to call 'Otherton,' and what the Dharma Initiative called the Barracks. You know, where we're heading today."

"Oh, that place," Rose said, then busied herself with stirring chunks of white fish into the pan, to sauté along with the vegetables.

Hugo said, "This fish, we could bread it with cornmeal, too. That would be awesome."

Rose smiled. "Gather round and grab a fork." They squatted together on the sand, shaded from the early morning sun, taking turns at stabbing at chunks of fish, onion, and tomato out of the skillet.

Hugo noticed there were large pieces of something else in the mix too, like potatoes but crunchier. "What's this?" he asked Rose, spearing a piece.

"You know those elephant ears that Sun used to grow in her garden? They have big fat roots, and they fry up really nice." She turned to Desmond. "What do you think?"

"Hot," Desmond answered, fanning his mouth.

"It's not that hot," Hugo said. "You should taste my mom's _habañero_ salsa."

"All the same, some iced tea would wash it down nicely."

"Sorry, no ice here," Ben said. "What you're eating is taro. The Hawaiians thought the first taro plant was a child of the gods."

Rose laughed, then said, "Gods? Well, imagine that. Ben, help yourself. You don't need an invitation."

"How did Sun know you could eat them?" Desmond asked Rose, picking around the chili peppers.

"No idea. I always thought of them as house plants. You know, Hugo, when you're checking out the Dharma bus, you might go up there and take a look for yourself. We could use some more of those big elephant-ear roots." She handed him a small bamboo spade and a basket.

"I see what you did there, Rose."

"Stop complaining. It's a beautiful day, sunshine, fresh air. And it almost seems a shame to leave this beach, with a garden like that."

* * *

><p>The trees along the path which led to Sun's garden had grown higher than you would expect in three years, and the path itself lay deep in shadow. But as Hugo stepped into the clearing, he gasped in surprise, for the wide-open space was far larger than he remembered it. Many of the trees had fallen, but they weren't cut.<p>

He was no expert on trees, that was for sure. Until he had come to the Island, palms were just something to line the boulevards. These trees looked pushed over, as if something massive had uprooted them. Sunlight flooded over the wide center where the trees had been pushed out, but that wasn't what took his breath away.

Plants grew wildly on top of one another in a riotous profusion of green. Tomato vines clambered over fallen trees, hung with green globes big as softballs. Peas dangled from a screen of thin, rope-like vines which reached as tall as his head, and they bowed under their burden of blossoms and fruit. Onion and garlic tops thrust their way up among Poblano pepper plants the size of small bushes. Scattered through the greenery grew a whole host of other plants he didn't recognize. Over everything spread the elephant ears, whose leaves ranged in size from a hand-span to some as wide as his body.

Sun would have loved to see her garden like this.

He had the peculiar sensation of being watched. Sun's presence seemed to be everywhere: in the breeze around him, in the sun-dappled vegetation, in the fat pea pods hanging off the vines, in the thick green garlic stems which bent over from fullness. The flesh along his arms began to creep, and for a few seconds he half-hoped, half-feared that her spirit would walk through the clearing.

But the moment passed, so Hugo got to work digging up the elephant-ear roots. They ran deep, so it was hard work, and he stopped often to wipe his brow or take a drink. Soon, though, he got into the rhythm, and as he dug, he thought about his visit to Seoul some years back, when he was still free and not locked up in Santa Rosa. Then, after he'd thought for awhile about Seoul, he rested on a fallen log and recalled what happened afterward.

* * *

><p>In late September 2005, Hugo visited Sun Paik and her tiny daughter Ji Yeon in Seoul, South Korea. Instead of going back to Los Angeles, though, on a whim he flew to Honolulu instead. He spent a few days in a beachfront hotel, but the sad white expanse of sand tied down by tourists and beach chairs drove him back to his room. As a kid, Hugo had seen this one movie, a cartoon where some shipwrecked sailor got pinioned by all these little people who thought he was a giant. Oahu was like that: tied down with condominiums and beach-front hotels, the giant of the land pinned under all the trappings.<p>

Compared to the Island, Oahu seemed like a stage-set, or a play of shadow-puppets. Finally Hugo could take it no more. He rolled up his dress suit and tossed it into his bag with a few t-shirts and board shorts, then split for Maui, but that was only marginally better. Desperate for a change, he stood on the sunswept Lahaina dock right out of the colonial days of old Hawai'i, and caught the ferry for Moloka'i.

It was as if Hugo had been to Moloka'i before, the feeling of familiarity was so strong. He paid cash for a month's stay in a small, shabby cabin built out of an old trailer, with a rusted tin roof and an open-air bathroom out back. Seven other equally run-down cabins nestled in a small cove sheltered by gently sloping hills. The little resort was mostly empty, since relatively few tourists came to the former leper colony. People wanted the clubs, the night life, the glamor of Oahu or Maui. And there were way nicer places on Moloka'i to stay than this.

However, it was a thousand times more luxurious than what Hugo had been used to on the Island, so it suited him just fine.

One couple, retired teachers from the Big Island, explained that there was a special reason most tourists didn't come anywhere near this particular beach. Something about a shipwreck back in 1842, and how the ghosts of the sailors and their leprous passengers still haunted the shoreline. Or maybe the locals just made up the story, to keep the tourists at bay. The couple invited Hugo to go with them to this diner a short ways inland, where they would introduce him around. He was going to like it here, they said.

The Blue Lagoon it was called, although the only thing blue about it were the few streaks of shabby paint on its faded front door. Otherwise it was an ordinary diner with a big, grease-spattered grill, where the fat, genial cook served up the best burgers Hugo had ever eaten. You could get fried Spam and eggs, pulled pork, or spicy chopped fish which made your eyes water from the peppery heat. While Hugo didn't drink, there were always juice, smoothies, or a virgin cocktail.

Soon the regulars warmly greeted the big mainlander who always stood for drinks, or who would drive down to Kaunakakai for ribs to load up the barbeques out back which simmered till dawn. If one of the neighbors lost a job or had a car accident on the winding two-lane road which snaked around Moloka'i, or whose daughter was having a baby, the word went around that the big guy would help out with that, too. They noticed that he always threw in at least two or three twenties whenever the hat was passed. He was pretty chill for a tourist, the local men said. He had _mana_, the right spirit.

One afternoon Hugo sat in the Blue Lagoon, mostly empty because the regulars were either at work, or resting during the hot mid-afternoon hours. He drank virgin Mai Tais and played with the umbrellas, sneaking an occasional maraschino cherry when the woman serving behind the counter wasn't looking. A stout older man, native Hawai'ian by the looks of him, took the seat right next to Hugo. He ordered a beer, then struck up a conversation. "You a tourist, right?"

Hugo nodded.

"Where from?"

"L.A."

"Ah, Los Angeles. So you must like _holoholo_, I bet."

Hugo looked confused.

"Driving around."

"Sure."

"I got a place for you, then. You ever been up to Pala'au?"

Hugo hadn't. So the Hawai'ian man went on, "You go up north, to the end of Kalae Highway. There's a park on the left. Wander around, find the foot path. Head up the hill to the lookout, and check out the big rock. Everybody around there knows it."

"What kind of rock, dude? Sounds interesting."

The old man leaned in closer to Hugo, grinning. "The _wahine_, when they want a _keikikane_, they go up there and sit on it. Us _kane_ can use the help too. Makes it a lot easier to slide the waves, eh?" He gave Hugo a dig in his well-padded ribs with a sharp elbow. "If it's closed, no matter. Sometimes the park ranger up there, he gets sick of the _haole_ and so he puts up a sign. Don't worry about it, just go in anyway."

The next morning Hugo thought, what the hell, and headed to Pala'au. The trail did have a "Closed for the Season: No Admittance" sign, but Hugo skirted around it, half-expecting to get wrestled to the ground by burly Hawai'ian park rangers. No one was about, though, not even any tourists. He walked up to the promontory, full of nostalgia, because of all the places he had visited in the Hawai'ian islands, this one felt the closest in atmosphere to the Island itself.

In a grassy clearing surrounded by ironwood trees with their long feathery leaves, sat a great rock formation. Two enormous dark stone balls were embellished by an equally massive erect phallus whose stony end poked out to slightly over the top of Hugo's head. Looking around to make sure no one saw, Hugo climbed up and sat in the space in between the balls and the phallic root. From where he sat, the long stone formation thrust out between his legs.

"Yeah, in my dreams," he said to no one in particular.

Hugo had seen big, oddly shaped rocks near the roadsides or beaches around Hawai'i before, many of them decorated with feathers, shells, pieces of fruit or flowers. Some of the gifts were neatly wrapped in banana leaves. Sometimes you'd see an elaborate scaffold of wood or bamboo, laden down with offerings and draped with leis or ti-leaf wreaths.

An idea came to him. He rummaged through his cargo pockets until he found a granola bar. Hugo had sworn off candy since returning from the Island, but occasionally he treated himself to a granola bar as a compromise. This one was his favorite, chocolate-chip. He unwrapped it, and placed it carefully in the stone hollow at the base of the phallus. Then, embarrassed, he snuck away from the clearing and drove back down the hillside, feeling ridiculous.

That night, when the full moon turned the beach sand to powdered silver, when somebody's boom box belted out seventies oldies, when smoke from camp-fires hung over the beach like a veil, Hugo danced with a tall dark-haired woman. He hadn't seen her around the resort before, even though she strode around the beach like she owned the place. She said she was on vacation, and gave her name as Ka'ula-something, long and full of lilting, musical syllables.

He asked her if she was from the islands, and she nodded. When he asked which one, she tossed her head, laughed, and said, "All of them."

She always seemed to be laughing at some secret joke which eluded him. Even in the dim fire-light he could see that she had a powerful sunburn over her ruddy, olive-hued skin. When he asked her if her burn hurt, she just grabbed his arms, pulled them harder around her shoulders, and said, "What burn?" with a rollicking laugh in her voice.

He danced closer to her than he ever had with anyone, thinking that she must be pretty drunk to press her stocky body up against his as intimately as she did. She was so tall that her noses almost touched as they slow-danced in the soft sand to "Muskrat Love." But she wasn't drunk at all, it turned out. Like himself, only juice or water for her. Little glints of moonlight in her hair danced like white fire.

When the boom box ran out of batteries, a couple of people grabbed ukeleles and guitars instead. The light, lyrical music drifted skyward as Hugo and the woman snuggled and kissed in front of the dying campfire. While her hands roamed up his thighs and under his board shorts, she whispered things into his ear which made him blush to the roots of his beard.

She invited herself to his cabin, made a few exclamations of surprise at his admitted innocence, and pulled him down onto the futon mattress which practically filled the tiny room. There in the glow of a dim 40-watt bulb painted orange-red, her dark fire-lit hair fell over her face as she climbed atop him. Churning him like butter with her strong thighs, she relieved him of his virginity.

After they slept a little, Hugo drank water from the faucet like a man dying of thirst. The room was stiflingly hot, so he cracked the windows.

"I guess that means we'll have to be more quiet," she said, her voice peppered with laughter.

He still felt her on his body like a blush. For a heartbeat he didn't turn around, because he didn't want her to see how powerfully aroused he was.

In a low, throaty voice she said, "Come here, lover." This time she reclined on her back, arms open wide to him.

At first he didn't want to go to her. "I'm, uh, gonna crush you."

"Can the clouds crush the mountain?"

It was a weird thing to say, but he was past caring. In a dream of red desire he flowed rather than walked over to her, and the rock of Pala'au had nothing on him. She said one word which sounded like "Now," so he gave her what she wanted, falling onto her with his full weight.

Late the next morning, she woke Hugo from an exhausted sleep with a long, hard kiss. As he struggled into his cargo shorts, she combed her brilliant black hair in front of the cracked mirror. She was already up and dressed. Her vacation was over, she announced.

"At least let me drive you to the ferry."

She laughed, as if that was the silliest thing she'd ever heard. "I've got my own way off the island, lover. But you're sweet to offer."

Her parting words rang in his ears, "Just remember. What happens here in Moloka'i stays in Moloka'i."

The resort trailers were mostly empty now, and all at once Hugo was anxious to get out of there. That evening he headed up to the Blue Lagoon, knowing at bottom that he was just another tourist who would disappear into the past, to be replaced by the next ones who'd come along. Even so, the men thumped him on the back and said "Mahalo" for all that he had done. No, Hugo replied, it was for him to say "Mahalo" back to them, as his eyes grew moist.

The night came on, and slowly the locals filtered out of the Blue Lagoon. Hugo knew that it was time for him to leave as well. The cook, the woman behind the counter, and the remaining customers said their round of alohas, with promises of future meetings.

Hugo wondered, though, if he would ever see Moloka'i again.

* * *

><p>Long warbling bird-song high in the jungle canopy brought Hugo back from his reverie.<p>

A cold shiver went through him, and with it the uncanny sense that he wasn't alone in the clearing. Suddenly a dark shape flickered past the corner of his vision, then ran across the path, so that the leaves crackled like crumpling paper. With deer-like grace, the dark shape darted between the thin trees, only to disappear into the green shadows.

"Hey!" Hugo called out, heading into the jungle along the route which the flashing shape had taken. Up ahead, a few long palm fronds fluttered against the wind, then fell silent. Hugo strained to hear whispers or any other signs that the dead were feeling particularly talkative. But the only noises were the typical ones of the forest. A few cheeping frogs called to each other. Something above in the tree canopy gave a long caw, almost like a question. Maybe he was chasing a shadow down the path, or maybe it was just the rhythm of wind playing over layered leaves.

Whatever he was after, it was gone.

The birds suddenly fell silent. Hugo parted a screen of leaves, and stared wide-eyed at the mysterious figure who stood stock-still in the path. For an instant he thought it was Sun's ghost, but it definitely wasn't. The girl who had darted out of the jungle was stark naked except for a long screen of black hair, and her skin was a deep forest green.

The green girl picked a few peas from the vines, and crunched them.

It was clear that she was no ghost. For one thing, Hugo had never seen a ghost eat before. The green girl crammed peas into her mouth as if they were candy, and didn't even look up when Hugo rustled even more branches. He moved forward, stepping on some twigs which broke with a loud crack. She looked up with a puzzled expression, as if she hadn't noticed him, or perhaps had just thought he was another curious plant growing in the clearing. Then she turned and bolted from the garden, her bottom swaying back and forth.

"Wait!" he shouted, but all he heard was the rustle of her movements through the green woods, followed by the faint echo of laughter. She ran for cover off the path, but Hugo didn't let that stop him. He crashed through waist-high ferns and small shrubs whose branches reached up like arms to block his path. Instead of getting tired, he pushed on without effort as he leaped over moss-covered logs, or high-stepped over small boulders. Every so often her pert rear end flashed ahead of him, but her dark green coloring was disturbingly close to the shadows of the underbrush, and she kept disappearing from view altogether. However, her trail left a faint disturbance in the mostly seamless tapestry of the woods, and he sped up as he followed it.

Hugo had never been much of a runner, but things were different now. Everything on his body shook, and normally he hated that, but now he didn't even care because of the wonderful exhilaration of running. It was like one of those dreams where you speed on with no effort, lightly skimming the ground but not quite taking off into actual flight.

The faster he went, the more it seemed as if the vegetation actually parted to show him the way. No cramps, no shortness of breath, it was awesome. He almost didn't care anymore if he caught the green girl or not, so taken was he with the sheer joy of moving his big body through the forest as if he were part of it.

A laugh rang out, almost like a bird's cry, and he stopped dead, straining upwards to see where the sound had come from. There she was, perched twenty feet off the ground in a shaggy-barked tree, her nakedness half-screened by the leaves. She peered down at him, a wide grin on her face.

"Hey," Hugo called out, panting only a little. "Why'd you run?"

"Wasn't it fun?" she said back.

He nodded. "Who are you?"

"Don't you recognize me?" She sounded a little offended.

"No, should I?"

Instead of answering, she gave a couple of loud unmistakeable cries, "Hurr-eee, Hurr-eee!"

"You," he stammered. "But you-"

"You couldn't see me before. It wasn't your fault. Just call me Rima." Her long delicate toes gripped the branch the way a bird's does.

Her name sounded familiar, but he couldn't place it. "You're not dead, are you?"

In answer, Rima picked a lime-green fruit the size of a softball off the branch, and tossed it at him. Hugo ducked just in time, so that the tough-skinned ball rolled into the thicket beyond. It was hard not to stare at her. Her nipples were even darker than her skin, as were her lips. He looked away, trying not to eat her up with his eyes, but she didn't seem to be at all embarrassed by her own nakedness, or by his interest, either. She tossed another fruit, and this one bumped his leg, but not hard.

"Do I look dead?"

"Just thought I'd ask." She peeled one of the green fruits and let the tough skin drop.

He picked up a piece, tough as a coconut shell, wondering how she'd ever gotten it apart.

Rima tossed the soft, peeled fruit down to him. "Here, catch."

The waxy slipperiness dripped with sticky juice, and almost passed through Hugo's hands. He licked his fingers, hesitant at first, then broke into an amazed grin. "Man, that's good."

They'd found a lot of fruit on the Island, but nothing like this kind, tart and sweet at the same time. Of course, they grew way high up. Maybe that's why even Kate, who had been the best of all of them at climbing trees, had never found any. He wiped his hands on his shirt, saying, "Thanks."

Rima descended the tree, almost walking down it as her clever feet gripped the bark. Soon she stood quite close to Hugo, where she picked up a long lock of his hair and rolled it around in her fingers as if savoring the texture. He stepped back a little, trying not to look at her breasts, not quite succeeding.

With a small disappointed pout, she dropped the long curl at once, as if suddenly reminded of something. "Now, down to business. I have a message. You have to remember this."

"Do I have to write it on my arm?"

"Oh, Jacob was such a silly-face. Of course you don't. No message worth getting should be that much work."

"So, you knew Jacob?"

"We all knew Jacob, even if he didn't know us."

"I saw Jacob a couple times. He had a lot of messages, that guy. Crazy ones." Hugo wasn't even staring at her anymore. Well, not much, anyway.

Rima drew herself up a bit, as if mildly affronted. "I don't think any message he might have could compare to this one."

"Oh, really."

"Yes, really," she said, mocking his tone. "I am to invite you to a festival. A party, if you prefer."

"A party? For who?"

"For you, silly-head."

Something sad passed over Hugo. "Jack didn't get a party, did he?"

Rima shook her head. "Sorry. There wasn't time."

"I bet there was a real bang-up one for Jacob, though."

She crossed her arms over her breasts and frowned. "We sent the invitation, but he never even got it. We shouted in his ear, practically dropped boulders on his thick head, but he couldn't hear us."

"But I can hear you." And man, oh man, could he ever see her.

"Well, Jacob never could. So he didn't get a party. Too bad, because things would have gone easier for him if he had. But enough of that silly-face. Listen well, now. You're to go to the Heart of all the Waters. You can get there, you know how. But don't stop there. Walk around the Heart three times, widdershins. Then you'll be there."

"Where?"

"Where you need to be, of course."

Hugo was still confused. "Uh, what's 'widdershins?'"

"Who doesn't know widdershins? You know, backwards." Standing deliciously close, she traced a circle in the air, against the direction of the clock.

"I get it. You want me to go to the Heart, and walk around it three times counter-clockwise."

"You say counter-clockwise, I say widdershins," she said in a pert tone.

"Same thing."

"If you say so," Rima said, a bit arch. "I'm not responsible for what will happen if you go the wrong way. I'm just the messenger."

Something else occurred to Hugo. Maybe he was supposed to go alone, although he didn't like that idea much. "So, who's all invited to this party? There are some other people at the beach. And we were gonna make a trip today."

"This is more important than any trip," Rima declared. "The party's tonight. So make sure you arrive at the Heart right before sunset. But if the sun has disappeared completely beneath the sea, you're too late. And you do not want to be late, so you'd best get started. Your friends can come if they want, but that dog has to behave himself around the birds. Now repeat the directions to me, and hurry up, because I have to dress, and I hope not to be late myself." This last part she delivered as if the merry chase through the woods had been his fault instead of hers.

It was almost like school, but what a strange one. Hugo strained to get it right. "Go the Heart at sunset but no later. Walk around the pool counterclockwise, three times. Then party hearty."

"That's right." Rima had already turned away, her cute little bottom bouncing as she disappeared through the pathless ferns.

Hugo went on his own way. It wasn't until he emerged from the thicket surrounding the beach camp that he remembered where he'd heard her name. He'd once found a few issues at his favorite comic store over in East Los Angeles. But comic-book Rima had been blonde, and instead of being small and pert, she was a real warrior princess.

Rima. Rima the Jungle Girl.

* * *

><p>Rose took Hugo's heavy basket of taro corms, Poblanos, and garlic from him. "Quite a haul you got there."<p>

Bernard said, "So, did you find the blue tank?"

"Not yet, Bernard. And dude, don't call it that." The face of the man Hugo had run over with the Dharma bus still haunted him. Even if it had saved peoples' lives, he didn't want to be reminded of it. "Ben, Desmond, you wanna hear this, too. There's something I got to tell you. Before we head out for Dharmaville, there's someplace I have to go first. Well, we can all go, 'cause we're all invited. But me, I have to go. It's a party. And we have to leave before sunset."

Ben repeated, incredulous, "A party? You mean with pointed paper hats and tooting horns?"

Hugo shook his head. "I, um, don't think it's that kind of party."

Rose and Bernard just looked at one another. Then Rose burst out, "I thought I'd heard it all. We survive a crash, we get blasted through time to the past and back again. That smoke devil in a John Locke costume tries to kill us all, and Hugo gets messages from dead people. Now, in the middle of all this crazy, there's going to be a party. With invitations. Well, I never." She threw her hands up, then let them fall in helpless resignation to her sides.

Desmond said, "We can start for the Barracks tomorrow. What's one more day?"

"Are you sure, dude?" Hugo said. "It's important for you to get back. But she said that if I didn't go, any trip any of us made wouldn't be worth it."

Desmond frowned. "That sounds ominous, mate."

"She who?" Ben asked.

"The girl who invited me."

Desmond gave Hugo a wicked grin. "You go out to work in the garden, and a girl invites you to parties. That takes some talent, brother."

"I guess that's a partial answer to the question of who's still alive around here," Bernard said. "Did you know this girl?"

"Never seen her before in my life. All of us are invited. Vincent too. It's up by the bamboo forest."

"Well, there are worse things to do to get home than go to a party," Desmond said. "Think there'll be food?"

"Sure, why not? You ever been to one where there wasn't?"

"I can't imagine what I'm going to wear," said Rose, a trace of sarcasm in her voice.

"No prob, Rose. She didn't say anything about party clothes. It's, um, probably pretty chill." Hugo didn't quite know how to tell Rose that Rima gave new meaning to the term "casual dress."

Bernard rolled his eyes at his wife. "You look fine. Look, let's do a bit of packing for tomorrow, then we'll go to this party."

(_continued_)


	12. Beach Party at the End of the Universe

**Chapter 12: Beach Party at the End of the Universe**

With Vincent trotting alongside, the five travelers entered the bamboo grove, winding their way around tall thin trees poised like staves. They passed the field where Jack died, then entered darker and denser woods. The bamboo thinned out, replaced by philodendron, curtains of vines, and spikes of red ginger.

As they drew nearer to the Heart, the land subtly changed. The air grew fresher, tasted sharper in the mouth, and the bird songs sounded sweeter. Through thick hanging creepers and latticed leaves there appeared a soft golden glow. All at once a scene of brilliant beauty spread out before them.

Rose and Bernard peered into the burning pulse of the Island, that living stream into which all waters of the Island flowed. Rose recovered her voice first. "So this is where it happened."

"Aye, pretty much most of it," Desmond answered.

"This way," Hugo said as he led them across the narrow stream, past that pool like liquid gold. As they climbed the little rise which crested over the Heart's cave he added, "Maybe we should, um, hold hands or something."

"Why?" Ben said.

Hugo balked, a massive obstacle to everyone's progress. "You know that story where the kids go to a planet run by a giant brain called 'It?' Sawyer had me read it. It was called _Uns__tuck in Time_ or something."

"_A Wrinkle in Time_, you mean," said Ben.

"Yeah, whatever. The kids, they had to hold hands, or they'd get lost forever in a spacey void."

Rose grabbed Hugo's hand, then her husband's. "Lead the way, Hugo."

After a second's hesitation, Ben took Bernard's proffered hand, while Desmond brought up the rear. Vincent loped along behind them. Three times they went around, and each time the woods grew more full of twilight, the Heart's waters more faint. After a rustle of green darkness and a rush of wind, they found themselves in a completely unknown part of the jungle, under a black velvet sky without moon or stars.

"What now, Hugo?" Ben asked, dropping Desmond and Bernard's hands at once.

"I dunno. Hey, Vincent! Where are you, boy?"

A sharp bark answered from up ahead, where what looked like fireflies moved about in the dark brush. The little lights started out as a mist, then compressed themselves into a golden cloud which led them on.

In the distance drums throbbed, pipes twittered, strings thrummed. They passed through a low arch of tightly-woven vines into a bright torch-lit spectacle, where stars large as coins blazed in the violet sky. Some shone pink, others pale blue or with a faint tinge of yellow. The glowing balls of starlight made enough light for three moons, bright enough to cast shadows. Reflected starlight broke upon the waves, filling the sea with flickering light, and the heavy smell of roasting meat hung in the air.

A beach spread out before them, its bright sands glittering with rainbow reflections from the stars. People gathered around fires, or moved here and there in a spiral dance, or lounged under grass shelters. Well, mostly people. Funny how Rima hadn't mentioned that it was a costume party. Otherwise, it didn't look much different from a night on the beach in Southern California, only there wasn't any volleyball.

These were some pretty good costumes, Hugo thought. The bird-heads looked disturbingly realistic, especially their life-like eyes. Their feather-clad bodies seemed to breathe with their wearers. One tall fellow with a water bird's beak strode by on heron-thin legs. Another man's lower body gleamed with metallic blue fish scales. Some of the women's hair flared up into spiky orange flames.

The five of them came to the thickest part of the crowd. Someone started to play a pipe or flute, and a fiddle chimed in. Then Hugo blinked once, twice, not believing what he saw. Somebody had invited the polar bears. Girls green and naked as Rima danced in a circle with three tall white bears, whose fur glowed orange in the torchlight.

Vincent had remained at Hugo's side the whole time. Now, though, he growled a little, and his neck hairs stood on end. Hugo patted the dog and said, "Stay, boy. It's cool." He had no idea whether it was cool or not, but if Rima was worried about Vincent going after the bird guests, any encounter with polar bears could turn disastrous.

"Right, boss," Vincent answered in a gruff voice.

Hugo stared at the dog. "I did not just hear that."

"Sorry," Vincent said, louder this time. "Lotta noise. I got you."

"Nah, buddy, you're cool." What the hell. Just what the hell.

Bernard gave a little chuckle. "So the Island has a nude beach?"

"Don't get any ideas," Rose told him in no uncertain terms. She turned to Hugo and said, "A little warning might have been nice."

"Sorry. I, uh, didn't quite know how to bring it up." Hugo pointed to Rima, who had joined the dance. "She's the one who invited me."

Desmond said in admiration, "Nice work, brother."

The music picked up tempo, and some of the guests urged the dancers on by clapping their wings or paws. A woman wearing a football-sized strawberry on her head offered Desmond a drink from a coconut shell. He must have thought it was good, because he tasted it, grinned, then drank it down. Strangely, Desmond no longer wore his ratty blue shirt and beach shorts. Instead, his dark blue tunic covered with sparkling gold braid gave him the air of an old-time sea captain.

Ben said, "I've got to give you credit, Hugo. You know how to pick a party."

"Thanks. By the way, Ben, nice robe. You too, Bernard."

Neither man wore their scruffy, stained beach wear. Instead, they sported long academic gowns of dark silky fabric. Ben's eggplant-dark robe was trimmed with violet fur, while Bernard's navy one bore fur of pale blue.

"Dudes, you're right out of Hogwarts."

"You're looking chic yourself, Hugo," said Bernard.

Hugo ran his hands over his silky maroon robe, trimmed with a lacy gold design. Warm sand ran through his bare toes.

Rose made a little pirouette, swirling her burnt-orange skirt. "Look at this, Bernard. It's beautiful."

"No, you are," Bernard said. The two of them walked off, hand in hand. Desmond, too, had already wandered off, and was trying to start up a conversation with one of the green bird-women.

More strawberry girls came by, offering them a choice of what looked like wine, or something clear and odorless as water. Hugo sipped the clear liquid at first, then chugged it down. Everything you could ever want from water was in that draft. He couldn't have been more refreshed if a waterfall had coursed through him. "Ent-water," he said to no one in particular.

"Whatever ent-water is, I hope that's a compliment," came a chirpy voice. There before Hugo and Ben stood Rima.

"Nice, um, outfit," Hugo said, although she was naked as ever.

"Thanks." She shook her head so that the little white shells woven all through her long black hair made a pretty clink.

"Rima, hey," Hugo said. "This is Ben. Ben Linus."

She smiled at Ben, then gave Hugo a great squeeze of a hug and said, "You made it." Hugo at first didn't know where to put his hands, then just gave in to the situation and let his palms rest along her smooth back. He had to keep from chuckling at Ben's deep blush when Rima hugged him as well.

"So you're Benjamin. There's someone who wants to meet you."

"Really? I'd be honored."

Rima offered Ben her arm, and just as they started away, Hugo said, "Rima, catch you later, maybe?"

"We'll see," Rima said with a laugh in her voice. "You might get busy and forget all about me." She blew Hugo a kiss as she steered Ben through the crowd, leaving Hugo on his own.

"Pardon me for listening in," said someone next to Hugo, a satyr with a gray beard, thickly furred legs, and a swishing tail. "Everyone says that but very few really know what they're talking about. It's far better than ent-water. ."

"So you know that from, like, experience?" said Hugo, still feeling a little dejected as Rima and Ben vanished into the throng.

"Indeed I do. Here, have some more," the satyr said, as he refilled Hugo's cup from a tall clay flask.

The second drink hit Hugo even harder than the first, filling his head with piercing clarity. Hugo had taken a lot of meds in his time, and all they did was fog you up like a warm windshield on a cold morning. This was exactly the opposite. Colors became sharper, brighter, more real. Time slowed, but not in a groggy way. Instead, he felt alive and alert. "Hey, when you drank the ent-water, did you grow, too?"

The satyr laughed. "In every dimension," he said, and his tail swished even harder.

The bears had stopped their dancing, and a few of the bird-girls climbed up onto their backs, like children getting pony rides from a favorite uncle. Nearby, some cat-faced beings smirked at one another, as one poured some of the shining water into a bowl for Vincent. He lapped it up, then began to chase his tail as the cat-people twitched their yellow whiskers and laughed.

The fiddles played something sweet and a little mournful, joined by what sounded like circus calliope music. Hugo wandered past a tall grass shelter on the edge of the crowd, where a pit had been dug to roast a pig. He wasn't sure what was in that pit, though, because it was more the size of a small mastodon, maybe.

"Almost ready, sir," one of the attendants said to him as he passed by.

Too bad there was no volleyball, Hugo thought as he headed towards the shore. Back in LA, he always surprised people when he joined a pickup game on the beach. Hugo's own teammates would try to stay out of his way, not wanting to get into a collision. But he was fast and accurate, and his spikes had the impact of cannonballs. Then, just his luck, Hugo spied some tangled fish netting and a couple of stakes. To two of the bird-men standing nearby he said, "Hey, give me a hand, OK?"

Within a few minutes, the three of them had erected a passable version of a volleyball net. The gathering crowd chattered in low, excited tones.

"OK guys, make a line," Hugo called out. Five odds went to one side, five evens to another, and the two kangaroo girls were each put on a team to even things out. Now all that was lacking was a ball.

A pair of fat, round armadillos waddled up and volunteered. Hugo said, "Little dudes, you're gonna get spiked, you know that, right?" They chittered at him and both rolled up tight as they could. He picked up the one closest in size to a volleyball, while the other uncurled and hung back as if disappointed.

Hugo and one of the kangaroo girls served as team captains, and they played rock-paper-scissors to see who would serve first. Hugo won, and when he shot one of his signature cannonballs over the net, the kangaroo girl leaped a good six feet into the air and slammed it right back over with a kick of her powerful foot. This was considered fair play because her forearms were too short to reach over her head, after all.

They were going for best of three, with Hugo's team ahead, when in the last set the game play suddenly came to a stop. The armadillo ball uncoiled and crawled away. Everyone became very quiet.

Two bird-headed men positioned themselves on either side of Hugo like an honor guard, their brassy wings shining in the torchlight. "It's time, sir," one said, cocking his head as birds do when they want to get a better focus on something. Then the two bird-creatures lowered a robe around Hugo's shoulders, a soft garment made entirely of green and gold feathers. One of the bird-men clasped it across his chest.

The truth hit Hugo. He pulled the robe around him, shaking a little. Either he had really gone around the bend now, or this was actually happening, and nothing would ever be the same again. He looked into the bird-man's beady black eye. "Thanks, dude."

A soft, keening chant sprung up among the crowd. Low drumbeats rolled out in time with the surf and the singing people. Hugo walked forward only because everyone behind him did too. He tried to hide in the thickest part of the crowd, but that didn't work, because the creatures in front of him kept moving aside to let him pass.

A woman walked straight towards Hugo. She'd been sunburned when he'd first seen her on Moloka'i, but that was nothing compared to her red glow now. Her wavy black hair fell in thick masses, shot through with bright threads like the small fires on volcanic peaks. Embroidered flames leaped around the hem of her crimson dress.

"Hey, Moloka'i," said Hugo.

She grinned with pleasure and mischief. "Hey, East LA."

Then Hugo forgot the crowd. He pulled her to him in one of his signature rib-cracking bear hugs, the kind he normally held back on with women, for fear of crushing them. Not her, though. She gave back as good as she got, and the heat from her body warmed him like noon beach sunshine. Now the throng was silent, although the drums still beat their rapid rhythm in the background.

"Nice luau," Hugo said, relaxing his grip but still holding her in his arms, drinking in the feel of her.

"I thought you'd like it." She straightened his robe, sliding her hands over the soft feathery fabric. "The bird-girls did a good job." Then with a wide sweeping gesture, she said to everyone around them, "Don't all of you have some serious partying to do? East LA and I have to catch up."

She then pointed landward, where small groups sat about, drinking and talking. "Oh, look, your friends are having a good time. And Benjamin has found Pallas."

Ben sat in the company of a tall, thin woman who might equally have been a beautiful young man. She was so pale that her skin matched her bleached tunic and loose pants. Her white hair was cropped off, as if she'd cut it hastily with a knife. She and Ben talked earnestly, oblivious to the merry-making around them.

"Ben's gonna help me with the Island," said Hugo.

"Good choice, lover. You get people together for fun, and that's great. Ben knows how to get people together to make stuff happen, to stay safe, to eat. The Island makes it easy, and it'll be way easier with you at the helm. But fish don't just jump into the net. You have to help them along, and Ben's good at that. Looks like Pallas is filling him in."

Hugo gave her a long look. "Who _are_ you?"

"Pele-Honua-Mea. You can call me Pele for short."

"But you told me in Moloka'i that your name was-"

She put her fingers to her lips and smiled. "Shhh. That was just between you and me."

"Pele. I've heard that name."

"They still know me in Hawai'i. Some do, anyway." Pele put her arm around his waist, running her hand up and down, warming his flesh under her touch. "Come on, let's take a little walk."

As they strolled down the shoreline, Hugo gave himself a shake, like you do when you just wake up from a dream but still think you're sleeping. No wonder everything on the beach looked so familiar. There was the sloped path which led to Sun's garden. On the shore, three big rocks formed the tide pool where Bernard liked to fish. The pig-roast canopy was set up on the same spot as their food tent.

Hugo turned to Pele and said, "It's our beach, isn't it? The one we live on."

"The best on the whole Island. Not all the whispers you heard were the dead, lover. Sometimes it was just us, having a little fun."

"So, um, how'd you wind up here?"

"A little bird told me. Well, a big one, actually. I was on Moloka'i when the news came. Those islands, so beautiful, but so much work to do there. And the stinking fish-head of a god who's conquered them, he's an insult to rotten chum. But that's another story. So I caught the wind and headed back as fast as I could. By the time I landed, Jack Shephard had already tasted the waters."

"Jack was good," Hugo said. "He killed the Locke monster. I couldn't have done that."

"He didn't do it all on his own. Your friend Katherine, daughter of Diana, levied the fatal blow. As soon as I got here, everyone repeated her battle cry, 'I saved a bullet for you.' She was magnificent, she and her tall range-rider friend."

"You mean, Sawyer?"

"That one. Such a team they were. I hope I can meet them in person someday, to thank them myself."

"That would be awesome," Hugo said, not daring to hope.

"And as far as you not killing the dark creature, maybe you wouldn't have needed to."

"I did try to go talk to him. But it didn't work."

"Didn't it?" she said, with a cryptic expression as she took his arm and pulled him along. "I guess that depends on what the real objective was. Come on, let's see if that pig's ready."

* * *

><p>When Hugo and Pele arrived back at the main party on the beach, Pele made a gesture of command. A young man all painted gold rushed to her side, and gave a small bow. "Lady Pele."<p>

Little jets of flame appeared on Pele's fingertips. "Is that pig roasted yet? Or do you need me to hurry it along?"

"I'll see to it at once." The golden man hurried off.

"Might as well bless it now." Pele turned to the crowd and said in a clear, piercing voice, "Hey, all of you. Listen up."

When they were silent she said, "My sweet love Kamapua'a, Lord of the Boar, gave himself up for you once again. And every time he does, he always comes back bigger and better than ever. So let's hear it for Kamapua'a, especially when we sink our teeth into that fat, juicy pig flesh. Because you know that next time I see him, I will."

She gave a raucous laugh, and the crowd broke out into cheers, claps, hoots, chirps and caws of all sorts.

Under a thatched-roof shelter, a large silken quilt had been spread out, festooned here and there with soft cushions. When they were settled, Pele turned to Hugo with mischief in her face. "Thanks for the granola bar, by the way. Chocolate chip is my favorite."

"You're welcome," Hugo said, flushing pink because of what that offering had led to.

"The man at the diner, the one who sent you to me, he's an old friend. He knew you needed to see me."

"Good thing I had the kind in my pocket that you liked."

"Oh, you had something in your pocket that I liked, all right."

Then Hugo did blush, deeply. Before he could speak, two attendants appeared, laden down with wooden platters piled with pork, sliced fish with savory sauces, what looked like crispy fried taro, and some little cream-colored balls rolled in chopped nuts.

"Time to tuck in," Pele said.

The food was delicious. Something was bothering him, though, and he had to get it out. "So, Kamapua'a, it sounds like he's your boyfriend. He doesn't care that you're, uh, here with me? Or that-"

Pele gave him a long look full of sympathy. Her tone was gentle even if her words weren't. "I don't belong to anybody, lover. Maybe the closest is Kamapua'a, when he's around. But remember what I told you: what happens on Moloka'i stays on Moloka'i. Back then, big man, that was fun. This is business. An affair of state, if you will."

Hugo had figured that out already. Something was still confusing, though. "Wasn't Kamapua'a the name of the boar we had for dinner?"

Pele laughed, a loud amused peal. "It was. Like I said, he gives himself up, and he comes back. That's a story I thought you knew."

Hugo just shook his head. Under the shelter the night breezes blew cool, and he pulled his feather robe around him. "There's so much I don't know. Pele, how am I gonna do this?"

"East LA, you're the Protector. And a true Protector, a good one, heals the land."

"But how?"

She leaned over, her face all business. "You get a cut on your hand from a fishing line, and your hand heals itself. How? I don't want to hear your late Doctor Jack's explanations. The point is, it just does it all on its own. Sure, you help it along with herbs or a bandage. But the skin knows how to knit itself. Same thing with the Island."

He still couldn't take it all in. "Really? That's all there is to it?"

"That's all there is. And you're going to have help, I promise."

"From who?"

"Well, for one, you see my sister over there talking to your friend in the blue jacket?"

"Oh, Desmond, right. Although they're kinda doing more than talking."

"My sister Nāmaka, we don't get along so well, but she's invited to my parties because she's family. Nāmaka rules the waters all around this Island, and your friend won't get a mile offshore without her help.

"Then there's my mother, Haumea. She can make a woman have a baby when a man just looks at her, or never have one at all. And when that woman's time comes, my mother puts her hand on her belly, and that baby shoots right out like a watermelon seed. Jacob's people and all those scientists pissed off my mother big-time, about forty years ago maybe. I don't even know what they did, 'cause I wasn't in town then. It was a mess, though, I know that."

That "mess" had killed Juliet and Sun, both so desperate to escape the Island, both so doomed. But maybe things could change. "So, um, you think she's still pissed?"

"Hard to say."

"It's kinda important, Pele. Since I'm supposed to take care of the Island and everything, it would really suck to have women, like, dying all the time."

"Mom's not a great conversationalist under the best of circumstances. Tell you the truth, she was so mad about it when she told me, I didn't feel like asking a lot of questions."

"You know, Pele, if you're not too busy... When you see her, do you think you could ask your mom about the babies?"

"Yes, lover, I will. And you don't have to look so worried, either. My mother likes you. You got on her good side after your plane crashed, when you took that pregnant girl under your wing."

"Claire," he said, and suddenly her name in his mouth tasted very sweet.

"That's the one."

Hugo swallowed hard, suddenly anxious."Your mom, is she, um, here tonight, too?"

"Nah, she's not one much for parties. Me and Kamapua'a, we're modern, we can blend. But my mother, she's kind of old-school." Pele rose to her feet, smoothed down her fiery dark orange dress, and held out her hand. "Come on, big man, affairs of state can't wait. I have to make a speech."

"Lucky you," Hugo said. "'Cause I hate making speeches."

"Well, you've made a few, and that wasn't so bad, was it?"

"I guess not. Though I hope the next one's not for a funeral."

* * *

><p>When they got back to the main part of the beach, people and creatures of all kinds gathered around them to clap and cheer. The crowd pressed around Hugo and draped him with wreaths of fragrant red frangipani flowers. A few people looped necklaces of tiny white shells over his head. They crowded about him, male and female, or hard to tell, kissing his cheeks or his mouth. Some just ran their faces over his, drinking in his scent. The bird-people brushed his face with the tips of their wings. Some called him <em>kahuna<em>, or big man, or lover of Pele. He heard the phrase, "Thank you," over and over again.

Then Ben, Rose and Bernard surrounded him too, and he kissed and hugged them as well. Desmond untangled himself from Nāmaka and joined them, along with Vincent, who pattered through the crowd and licked Hugo's hand. Even Ben hugged back, stiff and reserved. Hugo stood in their center unmoving, completely unaware that to them, he appeared as a massive figure of beauty and power, glowing with green-gold glory.

Pele climbed up onto the man-shoulders of a huge minotaur and raised her arms, waiting for everyone to quiet down. Her long black hair streamed out behind her like a flag lifted by the ocean winds. "Give welcome to Hugo son of David, Protector of the Island and the Heart of Worlds. Welcome him and all his companions who come in a spirit of peace. Fight alongside him, fight for him if necessary."

Then she grinned and made a fist, moving it back and forth with a fast rhythm. "He has a strong arm, and he knows how to use it." This made the crowd erupt into raucous laughter and cheers, even louder than before.

Desmond swayed at Hugo's side, three sheets to the wind, and his royal, swaggering drunkenness made his Glaswegian accent even thicker. "You're the Island's best-kept secret, aren't you, brother?"

"Shhh! Shhh!" said some of the creatures around them. "Lady Pele still speaks."

Pele waited for the crowd to hush, then went on, "Once he told a young friend of his that he was 'known as a warrior where he came from.' At the time he thought he was making a joke."

She knelt on the minotaur's shoulders, gripping his horns. "But what is a warrior for, if not to protect?" Pointing to Hugo, she spoke in a voice clear as stars, hard as fate. "Hugo, son of David, every being here is now pledged to help you. Don't be shy. Ask us. The sea, the sky, the winds, the land and all the creatures in it, all the green growing things, all of them love this Island and her tender beautiful center as much as they love you. Love us, and let us love you in return. You asked more than once, what am I to do? Your friend Benjamin son of Roger gave you good counsel. 'Do what you always do. Take care of people.'"

Once more, all the assembled creatures erupted into claps or whatever cries suited their species best. Rose gave Hugo's hand a firm squeeze and said, "Honey, you sure do have your work cut out for you."

A sudden commotion spread through the group. A green-skinned man, hugely fat with a long, vine-tressed beard, rolled up to the throng, accompanied on either side by several goat-legged men. "Komos!" people and creatures shouted. "Look, it's Komos!"

"Presents," someone else called out. "This means there'll be presents!" Then the crowd hushed as the green Komos lowered down from his shoulders a wooden chest covered with intricate carvings. As he opened it he bellowed out, "Humans first. I mean, other-worlders. Oh, you know who you are."

"That means you," a couple of fish-scaled boys said, pointing at Desmond, Rose, Bernard, and Ben.

"You too, sir," said a bird-headed girl to Hugo. "Go on."

The five of them approached the massive green man. "Let's see," Komos said, rummaging through the carved chest. He fixed a bright eye on Desmond. "The sailor first. I like sailors. They're good company when you want to lift a pint, eh?"

"Aye," Desmond answered. "Although were we in Glasgow, I'd stand you a good Scotch single-malt."

"You'll be there soon enough," Komos said. He handed Desmond a brass compass, battered and tarnished. "Ordinary compasses point to the true north. But this one, it will always point you towards home. And one day, you'll pour me that Scotch in Glasgow town." Desmond took it, tears standing in his eyes. He knelt down and planted a few dramatic kisses on Komos's hand, then stepped back.

"Lady Rose," Komos said, and she came forward. "The Island's ground needs to be restored. Even though the Lady Sun has sailed to that other shore, the work she began here remains. Carry it on." He handed her a small box, filled with black, sweet-smelling earth. "A single grain will cause a whole garden to bloom."

Rose took the box with both hands, holding it as if it were a treasure.

Komos turned to Bernard. "I don't have to tell you, Bernard, that all life feeds on life, and that such feeding leads to pain. You have always wanted to ease the suffering of others." From the chest he took a small tackle box, and opened it to reveal a row of forty or so fish-hooks neatly strung on a line. They ranged in size from a man's index finger to tiny ones smaller than a thumbnail, and each one had a barb so thin and sharp that it was almost transparent. "These hooks rarely fail. And they never cause pain."

"Thank you," Bernard said. "These will come in very handy."

"One more thing," Komos said. "Never use them for sport. Only for necessity."

"Of course not. Thank you."

Now it was Ben's turn, although he hung back as if afraid of the big green man. Komos said, "Benjamin, son of Roger, since you were twelve years old you have done little else but weave plots within plots, schemes within schemes. Now, you get to put your powers of observation into practice. The Island has a story, a long one, and you will be the one to tell it."

Komos handed Ben a portfolio of blue leather. Inside was a book thick with cream-colored paper, as well as a pen with a single steel-colored nib, and an inkwell. "The ink will never run dry, and the pen will never dull. Not within your lifetime, anyway. The book, mark it well. No matter how many pages you fill, there will always be enough. But hearken, Benjamin. These pages record only those words which speak true. Anything else, and the ink fades at once to white." He fixed Ben with a serious look. "Do you think you can bear the weight of this gift?"

Ben swallowed, clearly taken down a peg. "I think so. I'll try."

Komos then extended his large grip out to Hugo. "I don't presume to pick for you, Protector. Name what you want. Choose."

Hugo's mind went blank. This was worse when his mom cornered him in the middle of Thanksgiving dinner, wanting to know precisely what he wanted for Christmas. Vincent padded up behind Hugo, nosed him in the leg, then sat at his feet. Vincent's bid for attention spurred an idea, and that idea multiplied into two. But it would be greedy to ask for two things, when everyone else had gotten only one. Hugo hesitated, silent, not knowing what to pick, but knowing that he would have to.

Komos said, "Something's on your mind. Out with it."

"I can't decide between one or the other. I mean, to just pick one."

"What are they?"

Hugo struggled to get it out. "You know, my friends are on another island, this place called Tawara in Kira-bass, something like that. But they need to get home. And I think it's gonna be tough for them. So that's one thing. The other is, well," and Hugo looked down at Vincent, who gave a few thumps of his brushy tail. A few grey hairs in the dog's muzzle glinted in the torchlight. "Jacob did something to Richard Alpert, to make it so that he didn't get old. As long as Jacob was alive, that is. So, you know, dogs don't live that long. I thought, maybe, um, with Vincent..."

"That's not a gift which comes from me," Komos said in a gentle voice. "You can do that for Vincent yourself."

"I can?"

"Put your hands on him, and from the bottom of your heart, give him that gift. That's all there is to it."

"I dunno. It didn't make Richard all that happy." Hugo scratched Vincent behind the ears, and the dog's tail started thumping again, hard.

"A dog doesn't have the cares of a man. A long span of years will not weigh on him. When you sail on, he will age and join you eventually on that other shore."

Hugo knelt down next to the Labrador and placed his hands on the dog's stocky shoulders. "So, Vincent, you wanna do this? Instead of a few more short dog years, you're gonna go after me, not before. But it's up to you, dude."

Vincent thumped his tail again, and his eyes shone with complete, unyielding trust. "Whatever you say, boss."

"It's more for us than you." The truth of it hit Hugo as he said it. To the dog, one year or a hundred didn't matter, as long as he had his people. Vincent couldn't really say yes or no, any more than a child could. It was up to Hugo to take this momentous step for him. "We're a team, buddy. Nobody's gonna break up the A-team."

Vincent licked Hugo's face a few times, and then Hugo stood up, a bit unsteadily, not sure if he was supposed to feel anything or not. "So that's it? No sparks, no zaps, no magic rays?"

"It doesn't work that way," Komos said. Then he leaned his face close to Hugo's and said, "Now, what is this other wish? Think hard, and state it carefully. For the greater the wisher, the more powerful the wish."

Hugo paused. He remembered stories where a king wanted everything he touched to become gold, only to turn his daughter into a metal statue. Or the angry farmer who wished a sausage onto his wife's nose. If you weren't careful, wishes could go terribly wrong. Taking a deep breath, he said, "That my friends get home. So Kate and Claire can get back to Aaron. And so that everyone else can, you know, just get on with their lives. Be where they need to be." He didn't mention his other heart's desire, that at some point, somehow, they might come back. That he might see them again, even if it was just for a visit.

Pele stood by Komos's side. Komos gave her a long glance, then said, "That can be arranged, with some help."

"I know exactly who to see about it," Pele answered, though the stiff look on her face gave Hugo pause. Then Pele and Komos conferred, heads close together so that no one else could hear what they were saying. It made Hugo wonder just what he had asked for. What could make it so hard for the Ajira survivors to get back, that even Pele looked worried?

Pele must have seen his expression, because she laced her arm in Hugo's and gave it a squeeze. "Don't worry about it, big man. This is between us gods."

Hugo gave a small smile. "I guess even the gods have to reckon with Homeland Security."

"I'll handle it," she said, but the look on her face was hard.

The tiniest hint of purple dawn skirted around the treetops' edges. The stars had already dimmed and shrunk back to their normal size. As Komos wandered among the crowd, distributing the rest of his gifts, Pele and Hugo strolled arm-in-arm down to the moonlit surf. She leaned her head on his soft shoulder, as they listened to its endless thrumming song. Finally Pele said, "You know, wishes come in groups of three, and you only spoke two."

"Pele, with all you and everybody's done, I've got so much already."

"Do you, now?"

"So you heard the last one, huh? Even though I didn't say anything."

"Clear as a bell. Like I said, my mother likes that one, Claire. A lot, in fact."

Hugo turned so that Pele wouldn't see the naked feeling on his face, but of course she did. Then a tiny flame of anger licked through him. "Not enough to keep the smoke thing from stealing her, though."

Now it was Pele's turn to flush red. "It wasn't for lack of trying, big man. And who do you think helped keep her alive during those three years?"

"Sorry," he said, anger turning to embarrassment.

"It's OK. You couldn't have known. But don't worry, you can go see Claire and the rest of your friends, at least after I keep up my end and get them where they need to be."

"How? I mean, Desmond has his boat now, but I can't just take off with him. I got stuff to do here."

"Well, obviously. So just do what Jacob did."

"What? What did Jacob do?"

"You saw him in your old country. Didn't you ever wonder how he got there?"

To be honest, Hugo hadn't, so he just shook his head.

"There's a Door on the Island which leads to your old world. It will take you there and back again, swift as the wind. But remember, whenever you travel between worlds, the ferryman always demands a price."

"What price?" Hugo said in a faint voice, trying to believe it, even though it sounded so incredible.

"You have three days on the other side," Pele said. "That and no more. Any longer, and whatever devils plagued you before you came here will return seven-fold. You're part of this world now, and your place is here."

"Did that happen to Jacob?"

Pele sighed. "I don't know, lover. As Rima told you, Jacob never knew us. He just lacked something inside, through no fault of his own. Your people call it 'the second sight,' or 'the shine,' but he didn't have it."

"He said I was blessed, when dead people came to talk to me. He sounded so sad when he said it." Jack must have had the shine, too. Hugo thought of Christian Shephard, who had appeared to him while he sat in the bamboo grove with Jack's body cradled in his lap. At once Hugo knew who Jack had seen. His dad. Jack had seen his dad.

Out to sea, in the east, a faint pink smudge formed on the horizon. Pele said, "We don't have much time, lover. Soon as the sun's edge appears, I'm gone."

"So Jacob was sitting on this Door all along."

Pele looked him full in the face. "Hugo, there's no time. When day breaks I'll be gone, and so will you. But listen to me, though. Whatever Jacob did, his time is through. What's done is done. I'm going to ask you this, and it's critical. Don't think about it, just answer true. If your friend Claire came to find that her real home, her true home was back in that world you left, among her own people, and that she might choose to never return to this Island again, how would that make you feel?"

Sadness stabbed through him at the thought. But answer true, Pele said, so here goes. "I want her to be happy, no matter what."

As soon as he said it, the eastern sea blazed into hot, flaming light as the dawn struggled to break through the horizon. Pele's eyes glowed golden. Her hair literally flickered with fire now, and her fingers shot forth sparks like they had back at the party. "That's a good answer, big man."

It didn't do any good to hide his thoughts from Pele. Might as well get them out. "She might not ever even want to, I mean, especially if-"

Pele didn't make Hugo embarrass himself further. She put a finger across his lips and smiled. "I promise, when I see my mother Haumea, I'll ask. Meanwhile, you men on the Island, you're just going to have to not bother the women in that one special way till we figure it out."

"I don't think that's gonna be a problem." Not for him, anyway. And Rose was too old to have a child. As for younger women on the Island, if there even were any, he'd just have to cross that bridge when he came to it. Hopefully, like another bridge years earlier, it would hold him, and the rest of the women on the Island too. "Thanks, Pele. Thanks for everything."

She gave one last look over towards the rising sun. "Time flies, lover. How about you give me a big good-bye kiss?"

He pulled her towards him, and while her lips tasted more of farewell than passion, the kiss burned him all the same. Then one more thing came to him. "Pele, wait a minute. Where _is_ this Door, anyway?"

Before she could answer, that strange sun flared into a dawn like none he had ever seen on the Island. Pele vanished from his arms in a fiery burst of pink and gold. Blinded, Hugo sank to his knees as the light passed around and through him. Then, mercifully, everything faded into cool darkness.

(_continued_)

**(A/N: You can read some additional notes on Chapter 12 on stefanie-bean dot livejournal dot com, tagged notes: return to xanadu)**


	13. Thirty Years and a Death

**Chapter 13: Thirty Years and a Death**

Word of the neighborhood card party at the Bikenibeu Lodge must have gotten around, because the next evening, a few men showed up with more beer and additional sets of cards. Mr. Maleaua said they could use his patio to play, but he'd better get a cut of the winnings.

"It probably won't be enough to pay off the police," Mr. Maleaua remarked to Sawyer. "Eventually they'll close us down. But let today worry about today, and tomorrow about tomorrow."

Since the crowds were smaller and the faces friendlier, Kate managed to get a seat at the table, too.

"So why aren't you in?" Claire said to Sawyer, as he joined her on a pandamus mat in the corner of the patio farthest from the poker table.

"Cause I'm tapped out, sweetheart. Except for this bottle of whiskey, and I ain't bettin' it."

After a time, the last players left standing were Kate, Miles, Frank and Mr. Maleaua. Frank was losing, and groaning loudly about it. He was about to throw in his cards when Mr. Maleaua said, "I got an idea, Frank. You can bet your labor. Come out fishing with me tomorrow."

"You don't have to bet me for that," Frank answered. "I'd go in a heartbeat. You got swordfish out here ten feet long, and I'd love to catch one of those babies."

"What about you, Sawyer?" Miles called over. "You wanna go fishing tomorrow?"

"Why the hell not? But I'm still sitting this one out."

Frank said, "Guess that keeps me in the game, then."

"You want a swig?" Sawyer said to Claire.

She took the short, flat bottle and scrutinized the label. "Let me see that. 'Tasmanian Devil?' Are they kidding?"

"I don't care about the label, sweetheart. I just drink it."

Claire took a long swallow. "It's been over four years since I had a drink, Sawyer. It tastes pretty good."

"Four years?"

"I fell pregnant, you know. And then, boom, the Island."

"There was that nasty old Dharma beer Hugo found. You didn't want none, as I recall."

"Aaron was a bit young for underage drinking."

They sat silent for a time. Sawyer's easy, confident mask slipped for a moment. He was going to have to say it. Just a few more moments, though, because with each swig it got easier, as the liquor laid a coating of pleasurable insulation over him and gave him a little more courage.

To look at her, you'd almost not believe she'd driven an ax into a man's sternum, then held a knife to Kate's throat. Her short blonde hair framed her face with a fluffy halo. Except for the somber lines around her mouth, she looked soft, kittenish almost. A kitten with claws.

Well, no time like the present. "Claire, I'm real sorry. 'Bout leaving you, I mean."

She gave him an offhand look, as if she'd been expecting this for some time. "It's OK, Sawyer. I hurt Kate. You couldn't stand for that."

"No, it's just-"

"I get it. Look, I hurt people. Like you said, I gave up my ticket when I tried to kill Kate."

He turned away, red-faced, and muttered, "How'd you hear 'bout that? Oh, wait. When you and Hugo were huddled in that cage, right?"

She nodded.

"If Hugo knows it, everybody knows it."

Claire leaned against the concrete wall, her shoulders hunched. "That's not all, Sawyer. I killed people. "

He took another drink, then turned to her, eyes full of misery matching her own. "I did, too. Like that Tom guy."

"Tom?"

"Ben's right-hand man."

"Oh, yeah. Him. The one that grabbed Kate one time. Never saw him, myself."

"That's 'cause you all had gone to ground up at the radio tower when Hugo mowed down those Others at the beach."

Her tone wasn't vengeful, just sad. "They deserved what they got, Sawyer."

Sawyer gave a small bitter laugh, which didn't reach his eyes. "Tom was Juliet's friend, though I didn't know it at the time. There he was, kneelin' on the ground right in front of me, Hugo beggin' me not to, and I shot him in cold blood."

"You were scared. I did a lot when I was scared."

He shifted, frustrated at the soft alcoholic cocoon which made it possible for him to talk about this at all. "Nah, Claire, it wasn't just that. Later Jules told me how close they'd been." Hand out, he reached for the bottle. "It was then I started feeling sorry for what I done. Juliet could sound just like a school-marm when she wanted to, but mostly she just laid it out in that calm voice, cool as her blue eyes. She had that way about her, of bringin' out the truth. She sure brought it out in me."

Claire took the bottle from him and downed another one. "We all have things we don't tell people. And then, when we do-"

"When we do, it either breaks us to pieces, or builds us up. Juliet, she built me up. But now-"

He folded his arms over his knees, and rested his head on them. He could feel Claire watching him as he shook with silent tears. She didn't touch him, thank God for that, because any sign of pity would have sent him over the razor-thin edge into rage. These weren't the kind of tears which wanted a comforting touch. These you just had to let flow, until they were exhausted.

When he raised his head, eyes wet, Claire's impassive face gave the impression that she knew all about that kind of crying.

Over by breezeway, the poker game went on. Kate was losing one hand after another. From the cosmetics bag she took a couple of tubes of mascara and slid them over, adding to the pile of coins and Australian dollars.

"We're not going to have any make-up left," Claire remarked as she handed him the bottle.

His blurred vision made the Tasmanian devil's teeth look sharper, and gave it a cunning expression. Sawyer took a long, deep drink, and wiped his mouth with the back of his hand before speaking. "It was the damnedest thing, Claire."

"What?"

The evening was cool, but not cool enough to account for the shiver that went through him before he spoke. "When she died. Dharma was building the Swan Station, our Hatch. That's where it happened. There was this chain whippin' around, and I swear to God, that thing leaped up at her mad as a snake, wrapped around her, and dragged her into that hole. It was like it had it in for her. Damn, you prob'ly think I'm drunk."

She looked at him askance. Even so, she said, "I'd believe you even if I was sober."

"All of us millin' and runnin' around, but she was the one it grabbed-" Sawyer's voice broke, and he stopped.

A thick cloud of moths and other bugs surrounded the single kerosene lamp which illuminated the card tables, but Claire and Sawyer rested in almost complete darkness.

"I'm sorry she's gone, Sawyer."

"Me too, sweetheart."

Now she did touch him, laying her hand on his arm. He lowered his head onto her shoulder, and sat there that way as they took turns from the bottle, their throats raw from the spirits which went down like drain cleaner.

Finally, Claire said, "What are you going to do? I mean, if we ever get out of here."

Sawyer straightened up, and for the first time, fear trickled through him like cold water. "Don't have a plan. Stay one step ahead of the paparazzi and the sheriff."

"Are you, um, wanted?"

"Nope. But I bet somebody is," and he pointed the bottle over at Kate, who had managed to win some lipstick and mascara back from Mr. Maleaua. "What about you, Mamacita?"

"I don't know. Do you have any family?"

All at once the future yawned open, black and unknown. He gave a kind of snort, trying to sound casual but inside he scrabbled against the sides of despair's own pit. "I got people all over central Alabama. Some of 'em wrote me when I was in the joint, but that stopped before long. Then there was the plane crash. Now they prob'ly think I'm dead. Miles and Frank been talking 'bout going to Portland with Richard. That doesn't suit me on the first consideration, but I'm willin' to do just about anything to get out of here."

It was impossible to read her expression in the dark, where the lamps from the breezeway didn't reach. "So don't go to Portland. When we get back, you can live with us."

Sawyer looked over to where Kate sat. She'd folded her cards and was out of the game. The corners of his mouth twitched, until he pulled his face back into control once more. "You run that by Kate? 'Cause I'm thinking she's likely to say no."

Claire sat silently as a cat waiting beside a mouse-hole. Must have been all her years in the jungle. It was uncanny when she did that, because she just melted into the shadows in their little corner of the courtyard. Finally she said, "We've all had terrible blows."

He flinched. He couldn't help it. "I don't got much left inside of me, Claire. I'm like an empty canteen, everything already poured out onto the desert sand."

"That's exactly why we should stick together."

Something bubbled to the surface, slowed and thickened by the drink. It was too far-fetched to even entertain, and he didn't want to say anything at first. But like the old song said, he was drinking single, seeing double, and that tended to make his mouth run triple-time. "You puttin' the moves on me, sweetheart?"

The last time Sawyer had seen that bright, beautiful smile was when Claire had hugged Hugo, back at Smokey-Locke's camp. No wonder Hugo'd been sweet on her, and probably still was. If he was alive, that is, and all of a sudden Sawyer felt very empty. Jules and Hugo both. That would almost be too much to take.

Along with that sunrise of a smile, Claire let out a few hoots of laughter besides. Kate and Frank looked over, just to see what was what. Claire leaned in close to Sawyer and whispered, so none of the card players could overhear her. "Oh, my God, Sawyer, so that's it. You don't want Kate to think-"

"What's Kate got to do with it?" Her smile was infectious, though, and a bit of the tightness in his chest loosened.

"It has to do with all of us," she said in the same low tone. "We all need each other. I need you, Sawyer."

Some of the old stubbornness came back, a reflex from so many years ago. "Well, I don't need nobody."

Claire rolled her eyes at him, then, and he could almost hear them rattle like blue marbles in the ivory sockets of her skull. Only two kinds of women could give you that look. One kind was your momma or your sister. The second kind of woman was the kind who'd been yours for so long, she wasn't afraid to tell you exactly what kind of idiot you were being. Jules used to look at him in exactly that way sometimes.

Ignoring his set, stubborn face, Claire said, "Look, I know we have no idea what we're going to run into. It's more than just us living in a house together, too. We've all been through terrible things-"

"Sweetheart, we'll be lucky to stay out of jail."

"Maybe."

She was as bull-headed as Hugo when she wanted to be. No wonder she made it after all those years in the jungle. He raised the bottle and drank down one long, final libation, even though he knew there was little comfort or courage at the bottom, and the only forgiveness you would ever find there was that which you gave yourself.

As if she heard her name, Kate came over to join them, followed by Richard. Kate squatted down on the mat next to Claire, and said, "Don't try to drink him under the table. I've tried."

"You didn't do nothing of the sort," Sawyer objected. "We were just playing a silly game." He handed the bottle to Richard, saying, "Come on, Ricky, let's kill this one dead before calling it a night."

The four of them filled the whole mat now, sitting cross-legged in a circle. Miles and Frank disappeared into their room, and Mr. Maleaua was nowhere to be seen.

Kate looked over at everyone, face flushed with expectation. "Richard's company, they've maybe got a house for us. In Topanga Canyon. That's in LA."

Sawyer said to Richard, "Well, Zapata, don't you work fast." He started to sing, slurred and off-key, "Please come to LA, but she said no-"

Claire put a firm hand on his knee. "Look, I'm going to ask her right now."

"Ask me what?" Kate said, giving both Sawyer and Claire sharp looks.

"You go right ahead," Sawyer said. It took a good whiskey soaking to let him know how genuinely alone he was. He sure as hell wasn't going to follow Cassidy around, begging for a few scraps of time here and there, to see a child who probably didn't know he was alive. Jasper, his home town, felt even more remote than the Island.

The old saying went, "In vino, veritas," but the cold reality was that whiskey truths were carved into your back in blood. Just like the name of your crime, like that story by that guy who turned one of his characters into a cockroach.

Kate and Claire were talking softly to each other now, with Richard chiming in once in awhile. Sawyer let the whiskey current carry him back to his own blood truth, which he still wore carved into his skin like a ragged wound.

His crime had been wanting to stay in Dharmaville, with Horace's group, and persuading Jules to do the same.

It's not like she jumped into bed with him at once, either. That had taken months, and she'd made the first move anyway. No, the real seduction had taken all of his skills and charm, honed with years of practice at getting women to do what he wanted. The "mark" in this case, though, was Horace Goodspeed.

Amy Kennedy, too. Amy was recently widowed and lonely, so it was logical that Juliet would move in with her. Juliet was kind and sympathetic, too, always ready to lend an ear or soft shoulder to cry on.

Jim, as he was known then, became friends with Amy as well. Not that he seduced Amy in the usual way or anything. Jim wasn't stupid. For one thing, Amy was like Claire, more platonic friend than a potential lover. For another, he knew better than to step in between two women who'd just started setting up house. Especially when the bull goose of the barnyard had his eye set on one of them.

Also, Jim (as he began to think of himself, getting deeper into the role than for any other con he'd staged) didn't know what exactly had been going on with Horace, Paul, and Amy before Paul bought the farm from the Others. But he sure knew what he saw with his own eyes, how Horace looked around corners at Amy.

It didn't take long, either. Five months after Jim and his friends walked into the Dharma Initiative village, Horace and Amy got married, mostly due to the surreptitious urgings, double-dealing, and tale-bearing of Jim LaFleur. At that point, Jim knew that his position in the Dharma Initiative was secure.

What he hadn't counted on was how deeply Amy's marriage had devastated Juliet. At Horace and Amy's wedding reception, Juliet had downed an entire bottle of Dharma white-label Chardonnay, then sobbed into Jim's chest that it was just like getting ripped away from Rachel all over again. She had so much trouble making women friends. Women hated her, they never wanted to take time to know her. Amy was the first real friend she'd had in years. And now she was gone.

Jim told her that Amy had just moved literally two doors down, from their yellow bungalow to Horace's almost-identical one. That only made Juliet sob harder.

It was that night, too, when Jim first heard the story of how Juliet had arrived on the Island. And that night, they became lovers for the first time. Afterwards, the four of them just fell together naturally: Horace and Amy, Jim and Jules, famous friends all.

Horace announced that Jim's probationary period was over. Their chief of security had been lost in that unfortunate incident with the Others (but Jim saw the look in Horace's eyes; it might have been unfortunate, yes, but Horace looked a little too self-satisfied when he said it.) Phil Condon had been coasting along in the job of Interim Head of Security, but now it was time to find someone permanent. Jim LaFleur, he's our man.

Maybe that was part of his crime, too, Sawyer thought. Because Amy had never really gotten over Paul. Worse, it wasn't really Horace who'd won her at all, and on some level Horace knew that. In fact, Horace was a lot like Hugo in that regard, at least how Hugo had been before they came back to the Island for the second time. As Sawyer recollected, he had to kind of light a bomb under Hugo, too, just to get him to move on a woman.

Sawyer sighed, eyes closed. Home, Claire had said. Where's your home? Home was a little yellow villa with a purple clematis vine snaking up the back porch, where new potatoes from the garden and roasted chicken awaited him when he came home from the security station. Where a gorgeous, graceful woman welcomed him in with the sweetest of smiles, her work uniform already washed and hanging on the line.

It was his home, or had been. That was thirty years and a death ago. No one's fault, neither. Call it fate, karma, or the wrath of God: any way you look at it, he was a long way from home, the only one he'd known for a very long time.

Sawyer snapped out of the whiskey fog when he heard Kate say, "Well, Richard, if you think it'll help-"

"It's an excellent idea, Kate. Dan Norton already brought it up to me, that the more consolidation we have, the easier it'll be to keep things out of the tabloids." Then Richard said to Sawyer, "Good, you're back with us. Frank and Miles are coming with me to Portland. You in, or is it going to be LA?"

"LA ain't up to me, Zorro," Sawyer said, looking over at Kate.

Claire pulled herself to her feet, and she tilted sideways, like she'd just gotten off of a carnival ride.

"Goddamn it, Sawyer, how much did you give her to drink?" Kate said as she steadied Claire.

"What? You're blaming me? She barely had a couple shots."

Kate's disgusted look held him accountable anyway, as she said to Claire, "Come on, honey, let's get you to bed."

"I'm all right," Claire said. "I can walk, really."

Richard supported Claire from the other side. "Kate, it sounds like you and Sawyer need to talk. I'll take Claire to your room."

* * *

><p>One thing with Sawyer, Kate reflected. No matter how drunk you thought he might be, he always surprised you. This time was no exception.<p>

"Come on, Kate. I got to stretch my legs. Then why don't we go have a look at the land-fill out back?"

It had rained most of the afternoon, and the night-time air smelled almost fresh. The fifth-sized bottle of whiskey was practically empty, but Sawyer handed it to Kate anyway. She drained it and stuck the empty into her back jeans pocket, not wanting to just dump it onto the beach.

He scuffed about in the flat sand, then said, "So, what'd you think of Missy Claire's idea?"

She looked up, taken aback by the flat despair and resignation in his voice. "She wants us to all be together, like we were back then, on the beach. I think the thought of it makes her feel secure. Safe. She's been alone for so long."

"Not so alone as all that, from what I heard," Sawyer said.

"It's like having the ex-boyfriend from hell."

"Who just happens to be conveniently dead."

"That was his plan, Sawyer. To get into Locke's body, and then-"

"Did he?" Sawyer's fists were clenched. "I swear, I'll dig up that son-of-a-bitch so you can shoot him all over again, if-"

"She's OK, James. She told me that, and I believe her. You should have heard the relief in her voice. He never touched her, not that way at least."

"Well, that's one thing."

Since he sounded more like himself, less dejected, Kate let a bit of her own fear seep through. "Sawyer, I got to admit, this is going to be huge. Going back to LA, moving Aaron to someplace new. The two of them getting re-acquainted. James, it's overwhelming. How am I going to do this?"

"How do you eat an elephant, Freckles?"

"I don't know, trunk first?"

"One bite at a time."

That was just like him, wasn't it, to make light, but with a kernel of wisdom buried there under the mint julep and magnolia. He wiped his face on his sleeve, and suddenly Kate knew how Claire felt. Everything was upside-down, and none of them knew, really where they were going, or what was going to happen. All this planning was like a bunch of children whistling in the dark, acting brave, trying to keep the fear at bay.

Like Jack, with his counting to five. But this wasn't screaming-monkey fear. This slow, cold anxiety made Kate feel tied down, paralyzed even. It was like being in jail all over again.

Sawyer's voice brought her back to herself. "Kate, you and Claire, you're gonna be fine. Claire's momma's gonna help you out. Hell, she's had a lot of time to bond with Aaron already."

The moon had risen fully now, high and fat. Up and down the flat beach, people had lit fires and torches. Against her will, against her better judgment, it reminded Kate of the beach on the Island, even though it looked and sounded nothing like it.

"You know, James, about what Claire and Richard said-"

"Kate, I get it. You didn't bring up ex-boyfriends from hell for no reason. Honestly, I got no taste to join the stag party on the Portland train. That's my problem, though, not yours."

"What on earth are you talking about?"

"I got to admit, when Missy Claire brought it up there, it sounded like a plan. Guess I felt like I owed her, after losing her."

"Sawyer, she wasn't a package. Anyway, if you would let me get a word in, I agree. We should stick together."

Kate almost laughed when Sawyer's jaw hung loose and slack. "Either I ain't had enough whiskey, or I've had too much. 'Cause I just heard you say I could join your hen party in LA. Assuming the government lets us."

He'd spoken the same fear which would eat Kate entirely, if she let it. Which wasn't often. "Look, maybe this is all of us just making up a story to not lose hope. But Richard says it's a big house on a private road, with two outbuildings-"

"When the hell did Richard work all this out?"

"He's been living in our room-"

"I know, 'cause he can't stand the clean manly smell of unwashed socks."

Maybe it was just an effect of getting away from the motel for awhile, or the mellowness of the whiskey, but to Kate, Sawyer seemed to look better now. She felt a bit brighter herself, too. "That phone's practically cleaved to his ear because he's trying to help us."

"Help himself too, don't forget."

Oh, he could be so dense sometimes. Kate grabbed his arm and spun him around. "What do I have to do, hit you with a brick? I've been trying to tell you that I think Claire's right. All of us, we split up too much over the years. And," here the words caught in her throat, making her choke a little, "We've already all lost so much. So many people."

That got him to look at her full-on now, and she saw how his eyes suddenly went wet. He blinked a bit, then gave her a faint smile, only a light one, because his cheeks didn't crinkle up into dimples. "When you get what you want, Freckles, stop talking."

She looked down, flustered. Maybe she was over-stating things. Maybe she was reading something into the situation that wasn't there. But she felt compelled to state it clearly, anyway. "Just so you understand. It's not that kind of invitation."

His startled expression made her flush red with embarrassment, which she hoped he didn't see in the moonlight. He said, "Freckles, I get it. For you, this whole thing of going back to the Island, it's all been about Claire, and about Aaron. Let me ask you this straight up. If this is what Claire wants, you think it's gonna help her? Help with Aaron? 'Cause if it is, I'm in. But only if you are, too."

No humor lightened his voice. He suddenly sounded very sober, all full of responsibility and concern. She couldn't meet his eyes. She'd thrown down some kind of ultimatum, where none had even been required. "I'm all the way in, Sawyer."

They stood an arm's-length apart, looking at one another, but not touching. The atoll spread out all around them, and it seemed to Kate as if it were crushed into flatness by the overarching weight of the sky. The moment seemed to go on a long time. She felt stripped bare, not naked in the same way as when she had lain with him all those years ago, but stripped of everything that she'd built up since.

Stripped of Jack. Of her warm, comfortable home. Of any security or assurance, as they sat here immobilized in this near-endless waiting. Stripped of everything she had been, once was.

And so was he.

Kate was saved from following this line further, because Mr. Maleaua appeared from the back of the lodge. He threaded his way through the scraggly palms, then hastened over to them, kicking up sand as he went.

"I thought you two might have run away," Mr. Maleaua said, puffing a little from exertion.

"Where we gonna go, Zippy?" Sawyer said.

"James-" Kate said in warning.

If he got the jibe, Mr. Maleaua didn't register it. "My wife, she put Nei Claire to bed-"

"Sawyer, see, I told you."

"Oh, no, it's not the drink," Mr. Maleaua said in a helpful voice. "Seems like Nei Claire might have a touch of fever. Nothing to worry about. It happens all the time around here."

"Fever?" Kate repeated. The clay-like anxiety vanished, taken over by panic. Inside, by reflex, Kate began to count, _one... two... three_. She and Sawyer sprinted ahead of Mr. Maleaua as they all hurried back to the lodge.

(_continued_)


End file.
